


a light in hollow spaces

by Morcai



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Body Horror, M/M, Minor Violence, Social Media, Viktor is gay for good skating, Yuuri has given up on caring, author read too much animorphs as a kid, chronic illness elements, it's minor i swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-13 19:34:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13577514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morcai/pseuds/Morcai
Summary: Yuuri retires from skating with aching joints and a seemingly-unbeatable world record. He goes home, and does his best to fade into obscurity, and keeps his anger tucked under his teeth.My multi-part fill for YOI Fantasy Week!





	1. anger

**Author's Note:**

> I am porting to ao3! This fic is complete, so updates should be fairly regular as I clean up the original from tumblr.
> 
> If you did not follow the saga of it on my tumblr, this is a fic that I _intended_ as a oneshot until it grew fangs and claws and scaly wings.

_…in the middle of a turbulent season, Japanese skater Yuuri Katsuki has announced his retirement, a loss for the sport. Katsuki unexpectedly swept his Grand Prix qualifiers this year, taking gold at both Skate Canada and the Trophee Eric Bompard. Unfortunately, illness forced him to withdraw from the Grand Prix Final._

_When he returned, he swept through Four Continents like a gale, shattering the world record for the Free Skate on his way to gold. With his string of gold medals and his incredible performance at Four Continents, rumors began to circulate that Katsuki might finally be the one to topple Viktor Nikiforov from the top of the podium._

_Unfortunately, Katsuki’s precarious health took a sharp downturn not long after his record-setting skate, prompting his withdrawal from Worlds and, unfortunately, his retirement._

_We wish Katsuki the best going forwards, and hope that his health improves._

* * *

 

 **Skate is Life** @skatelyfe  
_does anyone know what’s wrong with yuuri katsuki? He was kicking ass this season, and now he’s retiring??? wtf???_

 **n1 yuuri stan** @katsudamn  
_@skatelyfe no clue, all anyone knows is it’s some kind of chronic illness. yuuri’s really private tho, so it’s not surprising deets r thin_

 **Skate is Life** @skatelyfe  
_@katsudamn fuck i wish we could have seen him kick nikiforov right off the podium tho. would’ve been fuckin sweet_

 **n1 yuuri stan** @katsudamn  
_@skatelyfe ikr? but have u seen that pic phichit posted? boy don’t look too good. i hope he gets better now that he’s not skating_

* * *

 

[a picture of Katsuki Yuuri asleep on what seems to be Phichit Chulanont’s shoulder. Yuuri’s face is thin, and there are dark bags under his eyes. He’s wearing what seems to be two hoodies layered on top of each other, and appears to be drooling.]

 **phichit+chu** : gonna miss rooming w Free Skate World Record Holder @katsuki-y. #sleepingbeauty #bestroomie #detroitskatesquad #katsukiyuuri #yuurikatsuki

[a photo of the Detroit Skate Club rink. The ice is empty, and the photo has been taken from just off the ice. A gear bag is visible by the door to the ice, with a pair of skates, guards on the blades, leaning against it.]

 **katsuki-y** : Goodbye, then. #detroitskateclub

 

Yuuri retires from skating with aching joints and a seemingly-unbeatable world record. He goes home, and does his best to fade into obscurity, and keeps his anger tucked under his teeth.

It doesn’t take long before reporters are tired of his stonewalling, and the skating world moves on to new stories–Viktor Nikiforov’s impending retirement, Yuri Plisetsky’s rise to the top of the podium, Otabek Altin’s implacability, Phichit Chulanont’s charm.

Eventually, the only reason people have to remember Katsuki Yuuri is the world record that stands for over a decade, untouched.


	2. happiness

[A photo of a young girl, her hair drawn back into pigtails with purple scrunchies, with two gold medals around her neck. She’s winking at the camera, and wearing a black and blue JSF jacket.]  
**sukeota3sisters** :Ready for a clean sweep! –Lutz #axelnishigori #nishigoriaxel #goingforgold  #jgpf2020

* * *

 

_Who is Axel Nishigori? It’s a question that people have been quietly asking for the last several months, since the Japanese skater burst onto the international scene. She’s been making waves as the new skater to watch, comfortably taking gold in not only several domestic and international competitions, but also in both of her Junior Grand Prix qualifiers._

_In spite of an active social media presence on instagram and twitter ( **@su** **keota3sisters** , an account she shares with her sisters Loop and Lutz) not much is actually known about Nishigori. She’s far from reticent in interviews, but amid the overflow of information she provides, it’s difficult to find anything truly personal._

_Her JSF profile is similarly barren–an association with Ice Castle Hasetsu, the rink her parents own and operate, basic information about her hobbies (training, social media, teasing her family) and skills (axels, naturally, and photography), but nothing of substance._

_Long-time skating enthusiasts might be forgiven for finding this a new verse in the same song–since Katsuki Yuuri’s sudden retirement and refusal to speak to the press, the Japanese competitive skating community has stubbornly closed ranks. Nishigori, however, is unique in just how much information is impossible to find…_

* * *

**NaoNao**  @noisebunny  
_predictions for the GPF this year? Plisetsky’s probs gonna kick ass in Seniors + Kusetzov will take 2nd. tho i’ve heard VN is also coaching Mikhailov?_

 **Levi**  @spllbndstars  
_@noisebunny iirc VN did choreo for a bunch of Russian skaters this season but still only coaches Plisetsky, Kuzetsov and Volkova? My money’s on volkova for womens’ gold tho_

 **NaoNao**  @noisebunny  
_@spllbndstars oh maybe i’m misremembering then! Volkova’s got good chances for womens’, but i’m rooting for Johnson! i love her sp sm_

 **fly in the**  @burnointment  
_@noisebunny tbh i’m most interested in Nishigori’s jgpf showing–she’s got some of the cleanest 3As in skating rn & such a sweet fs_

 **NaoNao**  @noisebunny  
_@burnointment i agree abt Nishigori’s 3As but idt shes got enough experience to beat Kanarot or Diaz. this is her first year internationally, and she’s good, but i bet she’ll crack._

 **fly in the**  @burnointment  
_@noisebunny she might not be v experienced, but she’s kicked ass p hard–gold at both her quals! It’ll be interesting to see how she does. tho, serious question: does ANYONE know who’s coaching her? her JSF profile just says she skates for Ice Castle Hasetsu_

 **NaoNao**  @noisebunny  
_@burnointment lol welcome to the biggest question in the japanese skating fc rn. nobody knows, or if they do they’re being quiet. it’s been hard to get info on japanese skaters since all the shit went down abt Katsuki’s privacy tho so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯_

 **NaoNao**  @noisebunny  
_I’ve heard rumors about Chulanont being at her competitions, but iirc one time a fan asked him why he was there and he said he was just filling in. it’s a mystery [ghost emoji]_

* * *

Viktor doesn’t usually watch the juniors compete–his hands are more than full trying to manage Marya and Alexei alongside Yuri–but he thought he caught a glimpse of a familiar face.

As it turns out, he wasn’t wrong. Phichit Chulanont is, in fact, rinkside in Beijing for the GPF, instead of home in Bangkok running his ice show. He’s talking to a young skater– and it’s not Karanot, which would make sense. Instead, he’s talking to a girl in the black and blue jacket of Japan. She listens to him for a moment before shrugging him off and rejoining the other skaters in her group for practice.

She’s talented, Viktor can see that much, and she skates with an assurance that’s rare for her age.

It’s the tragedy of Viktor’s inability to remember faces that makes it hard to tell if she’s competed before. The JSF supports a decently high number of figure skaters, and while Japan isn’t quite on Russia’s level yet, it’s a rare international competition that they miss.

The Katsuki Effect, they call it. Where every other country on earth slowly loses hope as the years go by and no one touches Yuuri Katsuki’s record, Japan just fields more skaters. It’s been the trend of the sport for years now.

A Thai ice show producer coaching a Japanese skater, though, that’s unusual. Unusual enough that Viktor feels no shame about charming his way rinkside to investigate.

By the time he’s joined Phichit, the girl has moved out on the ice to warm up, moving with an oddly balletic grace that draws the eye. There’s something familiar in the way she gestures, in the way she carries herself, but Viktor can’t quite place it.

“Viktor,” Phichit greets him with a smile. “Fancy seeing you here. All three of your skaters are competing, aren’t they?”

Viktor nods, tucking his hands into his jacket pockets and watching Phichit’s skater weave in and out of the others in the rink, running through unconnected bits of choreography and occasionally whirling into a spin for a few rotations.

“I didn’t know you were coaching,” he says, in reply. “Congratulations.”

Phichit laughs. “You mean Axel? She’s not mine. I’m just her stand-n.”

“Stand-in..coach?” Viktor asks, raising an eyebrow.

A shrug. “Yes. Her actual coach is sick, so he asked me to come up and keep her company for the first day of competition. He hates it when she’s alone at the Kiss and Cry.”

“He knew he’d be ill?”

“He has a chronic illness, he knew there was a chance–” On the ice, Phichit’s skater jumps into a triple axel that Viktor envies, and Phichit cuts himself off, swearing softly and viciously.

“Axel Nishigori!” he shouts, and Viktor sees the girl’s shoulders round in the exact same way his once did, when Yakov yelled his full name across the rink.

Still, she skates to the boards, chin raised defiantly.

“What was that?” Phichit asks, and for someone who doesn’t teach, he sure has the ‘exasperated coach’ voice down pat. “I told you, no jumps in warm-up!”

Nishigori’s response is a rapid flood of irritated-sounding Japanese. Viktor has no idea what she’s saying, but Phichit apparently has no such trouble.

“I didn’t say that on a whim! You know I’m just repeating what he asks me to!”

An eyeroll and another few words of Japanese are all Nishigori has in response, but she sighs and her shoulders drop a little at the reprimand.

“Figures,” Phichit says. “And work on your flying spin entries–I’ve seen videos, you’re getting sloppy with them.”

Viktor doesn’t understand the exact words of Nishigori’s reply, but the eyeroll and tone of a teenager going “Fiiiiiiiiiine” are the same the world over. Phichit makes a shooing motion with one hand, and she heads back out onto the ice, performative annoyance melting off of her as soon as she leaves the boards behind.

“No one’s done compulsory figures for over twenty years,” Viktor says. “And she does them?”

“I know, right?” Phichit says, grinning. “Her coach likes them–says they teach discipline. Plus they’re a good way to make her regret bucking his instructions.”

Viktor watches as Nishigori skates intently, weaving in and out of the others doing warmup. It takes her a minute to carve out a corner of the rink to skate her figures on, but once she has, she sets to it with admirable focus.

“They’re  _good_ ,” he notes after a moment, surprised. Nishigori skates neat paragraph variations, tracing her own lines in the ice over and over.

“She’s been doing them for years,” Phichit says. “Her coach says he used to make her and her sisters skate figures for at least half an hour before he’d teach them anything more exciting.”

Viktor can’t help turning to raise a brow at Phichit. “She has sisters?”

“Scary thought, right?” Phichit asks, laughing. “Don’t worry–Lutz and Loop don’t compete. Everything I’ve seen says that they’d be impressive, but they like other things more.”

Viktor’s brow arches higher. “Axel, Lutz and Loop. A skating family then?”

“Mama named us before Dad could interfere,” a girl’s voice breaks in. “ She’s a good skater–everyone says she could have gone international if she wanted, but she didn’t.”

While Viktor and Phichit have been distracted, the warm-up has ended, and Nishigori has skated to their place on the boards.

Up close, she’s almost startlingly average. Brown eyes, brown hair tied into a tight bun, short and round-faced.

“Why not?” Viktor asks, curious.

Nishigori shrugs. “She was dating Dad,” she says, carelessly. “And she says Hasetsu was hard to leave.”

“You left,” Viktor says.

“ _That_  is different,” Nishigori tells him with all the disdain of a teenager for an adult who doesn’t understand. It’s refreshing, to have someone who isn’t his student, or Yakov, treat him like an idiot. He hadn’t realized how much he missed it.

“How’s that?” he asks Nishigori, and she rolls her eyes.

“It just  _is_ ,” she says with finality, before she steps off the ice and takes her skate guards back from Phichit, who smiles at her indulgently, before he turns back to Viktor.

“Are you planning to watch the Juniors?” he asks. “You don’t usually, am I right?”

Viktor rocks back on his heels a little, considering the question. He doesn’t usually watch the Juniors compete, since he doesn’t coach a Junior skater, but none of his students will need him until the Senior men start skating, which is hours away.

“You should watch,” Nishigori interrupts his thoughts. She’s smiling, sharp and toothy, up at him. “You should watch  _me_. I’m going to win.”

It’s not overconfidence that makes her say that, Viktor can see immediately. Axel Nishigori simply believes, firmly, in her own abilities.

“I might,” he says. It would be no hardship, and if Yuri gets wound up over it, Viktor has the excuse of watching Marya’s up and coming competitors. Neither Yuri nor Alyosha need him to fuss, especially not this early. “You would have to impress me.”

Nishigori’s grin sharpens, turns wolfish.

“I will,” she says.

Phichit looks between them quickly, one brow rising into a quizzical arch before he shrugs and accepts it.

“You’d better clear out,” he tells Viktor, as though he hadn’t just watched a Junior skater promise to impress the Living Legend of figure skating. “We’ll be starting competition soon, and the judges will be less amused at you hanging around here for that.”

He’s not wrong, Viktor has to admit to himself. And the view from slightly above the ice is, in some ways, better than the view from rinkside.

“I’ll be watching,” he tells Nishigori, who just crosses her arms and lifts her chin, still grinning.

“You better be.”

* * *

Finding a place in the stands to watch isn’t as hard as it will be later. Most people buy tickets just to see the women skate, or to at least see the Seniors. The opening ceremonies haven’t even happened yet, so there are plenty of empty places in the stands to watch.

Davika Karanot, who Phichit mentions regularly, skates first among the Junior ladies. She’s not the only competitive Thai skater since Phichit, but she’s the only one currently on the international circuit. The rest of the Junior girls are less familiar, but at least some have been around long enough for the names to stick a little in Viktor’s mind. It’s a tight pack, all of them seasoned competitors and familiar faces, except for Nishigori.

She’s skating in the middle of the group, and Viktor wonders how she feels about it. He always preferred to skate first, especially at the end of his career. It never left him time to get wound up over other skaters’ performances. On the other hand, Yuri loves skating last, because he likes to leave an indelible impression on the audience.

Even if none of the other skaters are as bold or mysterious as Nishigori Axel, there’s some real depth of talent in the Junior Ladies. Viktor finds himself noting down a couple of names and notes on his phone as he watches the programs, wondering idly if any of them will be looking to change coaches as they leave Junior competition.

Finally, it’s Nishigori’s turn.

“Axel Nishigori of Japan,” the announcer calls, “representing Hasetsu Ice Castle. She will be skating to  _[To Neverland](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DfirgKEgFfeU&t=YjlkZDVmZjQ2NGMwZWRhOWIyOTk2NjUzMzU1MDQ5NTc3N2VkNmZmYSxQVUN6ZDM1bQ%3D%3D&b=t%3Ai-oBxerbUTaLG4Bmx_hbGA&p=http%3A%2F%2Fboycottromance.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F167671928419%2Fa-light-in-hollow-spaces-27&m=1)_.”

Nishigori skates out in a mottled green dress, her skirt raggedly uneven, as though torn, and the sleeves looking like vines that had grown around her arms. It’s charming, half Peter Pan, half Tinkerbell, all exuberance, as she grins and waves, taking an easy lap around the rink before moving to center ice.

When the music starts, it’s startling. It’s a light, energetic piece, with bouncy choreography, playing to Nishigori’s age. But the choreography is also incredibly  _difficult_ , though Nishigori executes it without any sign of strain.

In fact, she looks like she’s having  _stupendous_  amounts of fun, every flick of her wrist, tilt of her head, movement of her skates filled with delight. She steps out on her loop, wobbles landing her double toe out of her jump combination, but none of it detracts from the essential warmth of the program. She’s stunning, and, to top it off, her program includes two triple axels, one alone and one in combination, backloaded on the program and executed with consummate grace.

Whoever Nishigori’s coach is, he’s shaped an excellent skater. She takes her last steps and hits her final pose with the last note of the music–her arms akimbo, chest up, chin up, smile wide.

She looks happy, and her grin doesn’t falter as she skates off the ice and into Phichit’s arms for a hug.

They make their way to the Kiss and Cry together, Nishigori’s grin still bright, and when the scores flash up, they’re  _excellent_. Diaz, currently the best of the Junior girls, has yet to skate, but Nishigori is only barely in second place after her short program. It’s utterly impressive, for a new skater. Her score is only tenths of a point off from Karanot’s, and her program was, in some ways, more demanding.

And, as it turns out from Viktor’s frantic googling, she’s the youngest skater in the JGPF by at least a year. It makes her achievements even more impressive, and in particular her exceptionally clean triple axel.

By the end of the Juniors short, Nishigori is comfortably in third, and her score is just a few bare points off of Sofia Diaz’s first place. It’s the kind of gap that can close in an instant during the Free Skate, and Viktor finds himself, unexpectedly, looking forward to seeing if Nishigori can manage it.

* * *

 

The next day, Viktor drifts into the rink early to watch the Junior ladies once more. Again, his coaching work won’t begin until the evening, and he’s intrigued now. He intends to see the competition through.

When he looks down at the skaters during warmup, there’s someone new rinkside with Nishigori, instead of Phichit. He’s clearly Japanese, and his clothes make him look more like a skater than a coach. The dark leggings and deep grey jacket are unusually casual against the care with which all of the other coaches are dressed.

Then again, given the way that the man hobbles to the boards, accompanied by a patient Nishigori and supporting himself with a cane, Viktor thinks that he probably has more important things than fashion to worry about.

Nishigori is last to take the ice, and she lingers by her coach for longer than most. It doesn’t look like she’s just receiving last minute instruction either. Instead, from the tilt of her head and the way she leans towards him, it looks more like she’s concerned.

Given the way that her coach is leaning heavily on the boards, she’s probably right to be. He looks like he should still be in bed, but Viktor can admire the kind of pure, stubborn will it takes to keep moving when it would be so much easier to just  _not_.

Finally convinced to leave her coach, Nishigori warms up with an absent, preoccupied grace. While she does practice her flying spins, she spends most of her time skating thoughtless figures, and sneaking glances towards where her coach is standing with the kind of rock-steadiness that means he’s probably inches from falling down.

Viktor remembers that kind of pain, remembers how tightly he gritted his teeth while smiling, remembers how he all but collapsed once he made it off the ice.

It’s one of the few stupid things he’s done that Yakov didn’t yell at him for. Then again, the doctors did more than enough yelling for him.

By the time that warmup is over, Nishigori’s coach looks more than happy to leave off standing at the boards. He accompanies Nishigori back to the green room, and she matches his pace without pause.

* * *

With only six skaters competing, it doesn’t take long for Nishigori, skating fourth, to return to the ice. Today her hair has been braided into a tight circlet around her head, woven with a soft purple ribbon. Her costume is a very traditional skating dress with a soft ocean-blue to violet ombre, scattered with rhinestones that flash like the sun on waves.

“Axel Nishigori of Japan, representing Hasetsu Ice Castle,” the announcer calls. “She will be skating to  _[A Town With an Ocean View](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DvD1yAEWpzeQ&t=NGUxMzQ4MGIyNzA5OTRmMTZiZjQzZjI3MTM3YTc1NWY3OTE5YjExNyxQVUN6ZDM1bQ%3D%3D&b=t%3Ai-oBxerbUTaLG4Bmx_hbGA&p=http%3A%2F%2Fboycottromance.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F167671928419%2Fa-light-in-hollow-spaces-27&m=1)_.”

Nishigori’s free program turns out to be just as difficult as her short, and is executed with just as much poise and effortless grace. It has a slower pace, but the jumps are just as technically demanding, and there’s no room for slacking in her spins. Her triple axel remains flawless–cleaner than Viktor has seen from some of the senior skaters, even–and her airy step sequence is skated with delicacy but without excessive sentimentality.

The program is just as warm as the one the day before, full of just as much blooming happiness, but it’s quieter this time, homier. If her short was all adventure–second star on the right, and straight on ‘til morning–the free program is all the comfort of a familiar neighborhood and friendly faces.

When Nishigori finishes skating–one hand raised as though to wave to a friend, her feet set as though she’ll break out into a run–the audience leaps to its feet to applaud her.

She smiles as she skates off of the ice, meeting her coach at the boards and making her way to the Kiss and Cry with him, moving easily at his pace. Viktor can practically see his quiet sigh of relief as they sit.

“The scores, please,” the announcer says, and after a moment the numbers blink up on the screen. They’re high– _very_  high, especially for a junior skater at her first JGPF, and accompanied by a note that marks them as a personal best for the season. Nishigori has catapulted herself into first, with a handful of points to spare.

Down at the kiss and cry, Nishigori throws her arms around her coach, who laughs and hugs her back.

* * *

 Two skates later, Axel Nishigori is the new Junior Ladies Grand Prix Champion, with a victory of just two points and change over Sofia Diaz and Davika Karanot.

She throws herself at her coach, who drops his cane to pick her up, without apparent strain, and spin her in a little circle. It’s an impressive display of strength, especially given the pain with which he was moving earlier. But then again, the circumstances are unusual–it’s not every year a Junior skater making her international debut clean-sweeps the Grand Prix.

The two of them are grinning, fierce and identical, like the way Nishigori looked at Viktor the day before. It’s a strangely familiar expression, one that he feels like he’s seen more than just twice, but he can’t place it. Instead he shrugs and puts it out of his mind. If it’s important it will come to him.

Still, he smiles a little himself as he turns away. Nishigori has kept her promise, and he’s kept his. She impressed him, and he has watched her win.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus points to whoever spots the reference to one of my favorite fics!


	3. mischief

[a picture of a thin man with bags under his eyes, braiding a girl’s hair into a crown. He’s smiling faintly, and she seems to be talking animatedly to him. She’s wearing a JSF jacket.]  
 **phichit+chu** : can’t wait to see Axel @sukeota3sisters kick all the ass in her free skate today!

[a picture of a brown-haired girl, wearing a blue-violet ombre skating costume. Her hair is braided into a crown, and she’s holding a bouquet of purple and white flowers in one hand. In the other, she’s holding up a gold medal. She’s grinning at the camera.]  
 **katsuki-y** : the first of many, we hope. #axelnishigori #nishigoriaxel #jgpfchampion #jgpf2020

[a picture of a thin man with bags under his eyes. He’s wearing a dress shirt and is looking down, cleaning his glasses. What little of his expression the picture captures seems to be exasperated.]  
 **sukeota3sisters** : Yuuri is pretending that he can’t see what i get up to right now. He says he needs “plausible deniability if my skater gets herself in trouble here” I think he’s just trying to keep from laughing –Axel #katsukiyuuri #imsorryWORLDRECORDHOLDERkatsukiyuuri #bestcoach  #biteme

 **NaoNao**  @noisebunny  
ARE YOU FUCKIGN KIDDING ME WHAT HTE FUCKC I CANNOT #jgp2020 #katsukiyuuri #neverthoughtidusethattagagain

 **n1 yuuri stan**  @katsudamn  
 _KATSUKI YUURI IS BACK BITCHES AND HE COACHED NISHIGORI AXEL INTO A DEBUT GOLD AT THE JGPF I AM L I V I N G_

_MY BOY STILL GOT IT HELL YES_

**Katya Albright**  @allbrightallnight  
 _Axel Nishigori @sukeota3sisters just fuckign REDEFINED power move holy shit, revealing ur coach is THE figure skating wr holder right after you slam through your first JGP like the fist of god #iconic #jgp2020_

* * *

Viktor is killing time before the ISU banquet when he sees the first tweet. Approximately thirty seconds later, he’s on the phone.

“What the fuck,” he says, still scrolling through Twitter, as soon as Phichit picks up. “What the  _actual_  fuck.”

Phichit starts laughing, because he’s a bad person.

“You couldn’t have  _said_  something?”

The laughter doesn’t stop.

“You’re the  _worst_.”

Phichit gets his laughter under control, finally.

“Yuuri didn’t want anyone to know,” he says. “After the press shitshow when he retired, he said he didn’t want to put his family and friends through that again.”

“I wouldn’t have  _told_  anyone!”

“Viktor,” Phichit says with the patience of someone who has had to deal with his periodic flights of fancy for years, “you would have caught the next plane to Fukuoka in order to ask him fifteen questions about Four Continents and also to marry you.”

Viktor contains a wince, because at one point, yes, that probably would have been true.

“Anyway, he asked me not to,” Phichit says. “He wanted it to be Axel’s choice when and how it came out about who her coach was.”

Viktor sighs, switching from Twitter to Instagram and opening Katsuki’s profile.

It looks exactly the same as it did right after Four Continents–the same profile picture, the same succinct bio, the same blue verified tick. The only change is the new post, the first in eight years.

Next to the bleak picture of an empty skating rink, Axel Nishigori’s grin seems even brighter.

“She certainly managed to be dramatic about it,” Viktor muses, and Phichit’s laughter crackles in his ear again.

“I think she’s been waiting  _years_  to be able to do that,” he admits. “It’s the kind of mischief that she and her sisters excel at.”

* * *

After calling Phichit, it doesn’t take long before Viktor is pulling YouTube up on his phone. He doesn’t have to look very far to find what he’s looking for–the Four Continents  _[Infernal Dance](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D4wZFdbg7d9U&t=ZmU1YjFmNjZkOGVhYzg1ZWE3MjNkMWQwOTY1ZDgyYzUyNjI5MWVlMiwyVGxTczNLRw%3D%3D&b=t%3Ai-oBxerbUTaLG4Bmx_hbGA&p=http%3A%2F%2Fboycottromance.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F167851650134%2Fa-light-in-hollow-spaces-37&m=1)_  program is probably the most-watched figure skating video on youtube.

Yuuri Katsuki, all in scarlet and gold, skates out to center ice with perfect poise. And then the music starts, and it becomes clear that he is incandescently,  _brilliantly_  angry.

The program is  _insane_ , with more jumps than any human should reasonably attempt, and Katsuki lands every single one. It doesn’t look hard, even. It just seems  _right_ , that Katsuki, the Firebird, should leap into the air and come down precisely, a fury that no one can help but follow.

The camera and the distance it provides ease some of the rage, some of the knife-sharpness of the program. Time has softened its edges, as well. When Viktor first saw the program, livestreamed at the rink in St. Petersburg, his heart had raced and he could not keep his feet still. None of them could–not him or Mila or Yuri or Georgi.

Viktor had fallen in love, a little, the instant that Katsuki threw away his entire program composition and leapt into a quad flip. He had also been filled with a kind of atavistic terror that he had never experienced before, and that has never touched him since.

The program slows, gentles in the final notes, and Katsuki comes to a stop, the Firebird satisfied at the prone bodies of Koschei and his creatures, a soldier satisfied with a field of the slain.

The last pose is startlingly balletic, cool and calm and poised. Katsuki holds it for a long moment, before he relaxes out of it and smiles, sharply pleased. Wolfish.

It’s startling, to realize that Katsuki, now in his thirties and long retired, still smiles in exactly the same way, that Nishigori has picked up the expression from him.

The next video in autoplay is one of Katsuki’s much earlier programs–Holst’s  _[Mercury](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DRkiiAloL6aE&t=MTlmZTI2NmFiM2JhMGFjZmFjNDJhODQ4NjgzY2M5ZjBhMzcwMmM2ZSwyVGxTczNLRw%3D%3D&b=t%3Ai-oBxerbUTaLG4Bmx_hbGA&p=http%3A%2F%2Fboycottromance.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F167851650134%2Fa-light-in-hollow-spaces-37&m=1)_. It’s a mostly-unremarkable program, except that it has one of Yuri’s favorite Katsuki step sequences. Viktor has seen it more times than he’d really like to think about.

He doesn’t stop the autoplay.

* * *

By the time that the banquet is beginning, Viktor has found himself deep in the tiny corner of YouTube devoted to Katsuki Yuuri. He hadn’t realized how serious the fan following could be, even so many years later.

It takes three threatening texts from Yuri (sent in an approximately five minute span, because Yuri knows Viktor far too well) to force Viktor to close the app and stand up to head downstairs. He’d rather keep watching videos, but he has networking to do. He might not skate himself anymore, but his name still has weight, and sponsors are important. Yuri can handle it just fine, but Marya is still too shy, and Alexei hasn’t quite figured out how best to present himself.

It’s almost certain to be terribly boring, but it’s a kind of boring that Viktor has been enduring, in one way or another, for more than twenty years. He’s learned how to make it through.

* * *

When he finally makes it to the banquet room, fifteen minutes late and therefore on time to enter with most of the other guests. Yuri sends him a dirty look over the shoulder of an ISU official anyway, before returning to his conversation.

The last several years have shown a marked improvement in Yuri’s ability to pretend to be civil among strangers. It’s still pretending, of course–Yuri naturally has the manners of an alleycat–but the facade is believable now, where it wasn’t before.

Viktor allows himself to be swept into the whirl of people in expensive suits with lots of money, lets his mouth curl into the perfect social smile he’s worn for years. He’s long since figured out how to be keen and charming and convince people to spend their wealth on him and the people he represents.

It was even fun, once. A kind of game, learning to dance the right way to make people like him. Gaining sponsorships and smiles had both felt like winning.

These days it’s just draining–the steps are all too familiar and the victory conditions are too simple. It’s no longer a challenge, and getting what he wants no longer makes his veins fill with champagne-glitter satisfaction.

Once he’s made his rounds, flirted with and thoroughly charmed every important person in the room, Viktor finally lets himself snag a flute of champagne and a bit of wall space. He’s not stupid enough to let his smile falter, not in public, but he lets his shoulders sag a little, lets the wall substitute for the steel-straightness of his spine.

It’s interesting to observe the room, and Viktor checks in on his students quickly. Yuri is scowling in a corner, but he’s done his socializing for the night, just like Viktor. Marya has been dragged into a conversation with Sofia and a few of the pairs skaters, and she looks relaxed enough to not need rescue.

Alexei is talking animatedly with Axel Nishigori and one of the men’s junior skaters, as well as the young man’s coach.

Scanning over the rest of the room, Viktor’s eyes catch on someone he didn’t expect to see.

Katsuki is sitting in a corner, by a small table, wearing a suit with the tie already missing, the first two buttons of his shirt undone to reveal his throat and hints of his collarbones. He still looks tired, but less so than he did on the day of Junior free programs, the dark bruising under his eyes fainter. He still does not look well, but he no longer looks quite like he’s going to collapse if he stands up.

The expression on his face is cool and composed, and it makes the back of Viktor’s neck prickle with excitement. He hadn’t expected Katsuki to come, given how he looked two days ago. But he’s here.

Viktor sips at his champagne, feels it shimmer in his blood, and picks up a glass of water from one of the drinks tables. He never managed to face Katsuki on the ice, not really. But here and now, he has a chance for something different.

As he crosses the room, Viktor grins, no polite smile. He has no doubt that a conversation with Katsuki will be anything but boring.

* * *

“Katsuki,” Viktor says, gaining the man’s attention, before he offers a flute of water. “Your student is impressive. I’m excited to see what she does as a Senior.”

“Call me Yuuri,” Katsuki says, smiling and taking the glass. “You’ll be waiting a few years for her, to go Senior, though. Axel plans to thoroughly dominate Juniors before she moves on.”

“Then I will watch her do that,” Viktor says, winning a flicker of a smile.

“Your Volkova will be in trouble when Axel is ready, though,” Yuuri says, and there’s subtle challenge in his voice.

Viktor shrugs. “It will be good for Masha to have some more challenges on the ice,” he says. “It’s bad for skaters to get bored.”

Yuuri’s eyes are sharp and amber, as his lips curl into a cutting smile, just a flash of teeth showing. “Is that what happened to you?” he asks, and Viktor’s breathing stills in his chest.

No one’s ever called him out on that before.

There’s a soft groan, and Viktor blinks, looking back at Yuuri, who is scrubbing his hands across his face.

“Sorry,” he says, after a moment. “I’m…a little wound up. I don’t like parties. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”

“No,” Viktor says, still a little shocked at being seen so clearly for a moment. “No, it’s fine.” He smiles, a little wry, and leans one hip against the small table Yuuri’s sitting at. “You aren’t exactly wrong.”

Yuuri sighs and slouches into his chair. It makes him look much younger than he must be, especially when he blows out a long breath. “I didn’t want to be right,” he says, and he sounds grumpy. It’s charming, and Viktor finds himself laughing a little at the petulance.

“You made it better, though,” Viktor says, putting down his champagne on Yuuri’s table. “I was bored, and then suddenly, there you were. The firebird, incandescent.”

Yuuri blushes faintly, and he takes a sip of his water, as though trying to hide behind the glass.

“We never competed,” he says softly, like it matters, and Viktor shrugs.

“I wish we had,” he admits baldly. “I was thinking of retiring the same year you did. Then you set an impossible record and retired. It kept me skating for the next two years–trying to beat that record.”

Yuuri’s flush deepens. “It wasn’t intended to be impossible.”

“But it is, now. How close has anyone ever gotten to it? Fifteen points off?”

“Seventeen,” Katsuki says softly, lowering his eyes. “Plisetsky’s  _[Battle on the Ice](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FxyDKezDLGTM%3Ft%3D1m50s&t=NWFhNzEwM2EzOTZkZTdmZTkyMWQyZjgyOTg4NGYzZDI0NWE3ZTAxMiwyVGxTczNLRw%3D%3D&b=t%3Ai-oBxerbUTaLG4Bmx_hbGA&p=http%3A%2F%2Fboycottromance.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F167851650134%2Fa-light-in-hollow-spaces-37&m=1)_  program two years ago.”

Viktor can’t help the way his nose wrinkles slightly at the reminder. Yuri choreographed the program himself, jump-heavy and angry, suited to the music but without the artistry to make it really shine. He nearly took himself out of the season more than once, falling in practice, and he’d stumbled on his spins for the whole season.

Yuuri laughs, and Viktor blinks, startled.

“You didn’t like it either, did you?” Yuuri says, and his eyes–-strange and golden-amber–-are sharply amused. “I thought, the whole season, that it would be a pity if he beat me. It was very petty of me.”

“It was an impressive program,” Viktor tries.

“Not impressive enough,” comes the reply, and Yuuri’s grin sharpens, showing a glint of teeth. “Maybe if he’d focused more on his spins.”

Viktor’s breath catches at the dig. It’s not undeserved–Yuri managed nothing better than a level three spin the whole season, and Yuuri was known for his spins. The ones Infernal Dance program are flawless level fours. But from someone who wasn’t intending to set a record like that, the comment is unexpectedly cutting.

“Yuuri!”

Nishigori bounces to Yuuri’s side, and Viktor wonders at the snap he heard in her voice. She’s smiling, and as she leans against her coach’s shoulder, the look on her face is angelic enough that Viktor can almost forget she’s a menace with an Instagram account.

“Yuuri,” she says again, drawing the name into a whine, “This is boring.”

“I told you,” Yuuri says. “You said that you’d find a way to make it fun.”

Nishigori sighs, leaning more heavily on Yuuri’s shoulder, her cheek brushing his. “You kidnapped how I was going to make it fun, and Lutz said Mama was taking her and Loop’s phones.”

“Plan better,” Yuuri tells her mercilessly, but there’s a tension Viktor hadn’t noticed slowly trickling out of his shoulders, the longer Nishigori leans on him.

“I will,” she says, sounding irritated. “ _Next_  time.”

“Nishigori,” Viktor says, and she looks up from bantering with her coach, expression suddenly intent. “Congratulations on your gold.”

Her face melts into a pleased grin, which she buries, quickly, in her coach’s shoulder.

“Thank you,” she says after a moment, before returning her attention to Yuuri.

“You promised you’d dance with me,” she says, tugging gently at the sleeve of his jacket. It’s the idle request of someone who’s clearly bored of being one of approximately eight people under the age of nineteen in the whole room.

“But I was having a conversation,” Yuuri says, leaning his head onto his fist, elbow on the table. His tone of voice is so teasing that he sounds more like an older sibling than a coach, and Nishigori rolls her eyes at him accordingly.

“ _Yuu_ ri,” she says, annoyed, and his face creases into a smile at her exasperation.

“One dance,” he concedes, before looking up at Viktor. “Sorry to run, but I did promise her.”

Viktor smiles, rocking back on his heels and flapping a hand.

“I would not keep you from your student,” he says. “I can wait.”

The smile that Yuuri gives him in return is bright, if close-mouthed.

“Come  _on_ , Yuuri,” Nishigori says, impatient, and Yuuri laughs, before stripping off his suit jacket and draping it across the back of his chair.

“Do you mind watching it for me?” he asks Viktor. “I’m afraid I’ll forget where it is, and have to send Axel all over the room looking for it later.”

 _I’d watch anything for you_ , Viktor thinks, distracted by the flex of Yuuri’s shoulder muscles under his dress shirt.

“It’s no problem,” he says.

“Thank you,” Yuuri says, before Nishigori drags him to the dancefloor.

Viktor sighs, leans his hip a little more heavily against the table, and pulls out his phone.

_To: Arthur Chulanont  
_ _i am. so incredibly gay._

_From: Arthur Chulanont  
_ _I know, right?_

The eyeroll is almost entirely involuntary. Looking up from his phone, it doesn’t take long to find Yuuri and his student out on the dance floor.

They aren’t dancing in any kind of proper style–Viktor knows enough ballroom to recognize that. Still, it’s obvious that they’re having fun anyway. Nishigori laughs as Yuuri spins her, faster and faster until her dress flares out around her legs.

Some of the ISU officials look ever so slightly scandalized, but they’re the type who look scandalized every time someone has any kind of fun at one of these events. Most people watch indulgently as Yuuri dances with his student.

Besides, it’s nothing like Chris’ final GPF, where he somehow got a pole installed in the banquet hall, and managed to get half of the skaters there _blindingly_ drunk. Viktor still has pictures, and a gap in his memory. This is tamer by far.

It doesn’t take long before Yuuri and Nishigori have cleared a space on the dance floor. Untrained and informal as their dancing together might be, and as comical as the height difference is, the two of them still move the same.

Viktor presses a finger to his lips and watches, as Yuuri laughs and lifts Nishigori easily above his head. He can’t help wondering if they had the same dance instructor, because there’s a commonality in their movements, not just here, but on the ice. A certain turn of the wrist, a particular set to the jaw.

It’s incredible, how much better Yuuri seems after only two days. He dances without a hint of the pain he showed on the day of the free skate, and his grace reminds Viktor of when Yuuri wasn’t a world record holder, but just barely twenty and still had footwork that left Viktor breathless.

* * *

When they finally leave the dancefloor, Yuuri is laughing, and Nishigori’s cheeks are pink with the exertion. Her hair is in disarray, and she’s grinning up at her coach.

“Minako’s gonna make you do so much practice,” she says, as they make their way back towards Viktor. “You’re rusty.”

“Says the child who doesn’t know how to waltz.” Yuuri replies, sounding amused.

The byplay continues, but Viktor is distracted, because Yuuri is carefully rolling up his sleeves, revealing bony wrists and muscular forearms. A knotted bracelet in pink, blue and purple wraps around one wrist, incongruously childish.

Suddenly his text to Phichit seems utterly inadequate for the situation.

“Give me your phone,” Yuuri says, and Viktor blinks, a little startled, and drags his eyes from the jut of Yuuri’s wrists and the way his rolled up sleeves stretch over his biceps. “Come on,” he continues, holding out one hand and wiggling his fingers. “Hand it over.”

Viktor doesn’t want to hand over his phone–he’s acquainted with Phichit Chulanont after all–except how he kind of does. Anything to have Yuuri keep smiling at him, faint and amused.

He unlocks his phone and hands it over.

Yuuri fiddles with it for a moment, then with his own, before putting both down on the table.

“Now then,” he says, holding out one hand. “Dance with me?”

* * *

[A picture of Katsuki Yuuri, dipping Viktor Nikiforov. Viktor is grinning up at Yuuri, who is looking down at him fondly.]  
 **sukeota3sisters** : skate legends –Axel #viktornikiforov #katsukiyuuri #yuurikatsuki #gpf2020 #livinglegend #freeskateking #biteme


	4. serenity

_From: Katsuki Yuuri  
Tell Plisetsky that if he wants his step sequences to score better, he needs better edges. I always make Axel do figures._

_From: +81 (xxx) xxx-xxxx  
Also he needs to pay more attention when he changes feet on his spins._

_To: Free Skate King  
i told him what you said and he stomped off swearing_

_To: Free Skate King  
but he’s actually started practicing his change foot camel more than his quad lutz so ty_

* * *

_To: Viktor Nikiforov  
Good luck at Nationals! Tell Marya that Axel’s looking forward to seeing her on the stream!_

_From: Viktor Nikiforov  
masha is blushing, but says good luck to axel in her nationals!_

* * *

_To: Free Skate King [crown][heart]  
well done at 4cc! Less than a point off from gold is nothing to be ashamed of_

_From: Free Skate King [crown][heart]  
Axel is swearing, and I know she didn’t know those words before you gave her Plisetsky’s number._

_To: Free Skate King [crown][heart]  
….oops_

* * *

_From: Viktor Nikiforov  
dinner after Axel’s short? i’ll pay_

_To: Viktor Nikiforov  
As long as I can pay after Yuri and Alexei’s._

_From: Viktor Nikiforov  
deal! <3_

* * *

Junior ladies skate for the first time on the second day of the World Championships, and Viktor makes sure he’s available to see it.

Axel, in her gold and variegated green, skates last in her group. Much of her program remains the same, though she’s upgraded from a loop to a lutz, as well as pushing it to just after the halfway mark in her program.

Still, the program is joyous in the same way it was three months ago. The only change is in its depth, in the way that Axel is somehow Peter Pan, Tinkerbell, and Wendy. Fearless, single-minded, amazed, all at once.

It’s a program that only someone so young could skate.

By the time she finishes, Viktor’s heart is soaring, and when Axel steps off of the ice, Yuuri is there, grinning.

This time around he looks healthy, though he’s stuck to dressing down for competition. Not that Viktor is complaining, because the view is _excellent_. Wearing leggings and a close-fitting charcoal jacket, Yuuri is a lean and gorgeous shadow as he escorts Axel to the Kiss and Cry.

When Axel’s scores come out, they’re a new personal best–putting her at the head of her group, and in second place overall, with one more group left to skate.

Viktor smiles, and pulls out his phone.

_To: Free Skate King [crown][heart]  
it looked amazing. maybe could have been a little cleaner on the transitions between CoSp portions? and tell her to watch her center on the 3Lz_

Down by the Kiss and Cry, Viktor watches as Yuuri takes his phone from a pocket of his jacket, and shakes his head, before becoming absorbed in something on it.

Viktor is not surprised when, moments later, his phone vibrates in his hand.

_From: Free Skate King [crown][heart]  
Don’t you have your own students to coach?_

Viktor laughs, and puts his phone away. It's not like Yuuri's  _wrong_ , after all. None of his students are skating until tomorrow, but he probably should check on them, anyway.

* * *

He can’t sleep.

It’s stupid–he’s not competing tomorrow–but it’s still true. He’s been staring at the red numbers of the hotel clock for nearly an hour now, and he’s no closer to sleep than he was when he started.

Growling softly to himself, Viktor forces himself out of bed, and throws on the workout gear he always makes sure to pack. Then he picks up his skates, which he hasn’t traveled without since he was six.

He has a pass from the ISU, as a coach, and he’s _Viktor fucking Nikiforov_. They’ll let him skate at the arena, even if it is stupid late and he’s no longer a competitor.

* * *

It takes just a smile, an autograph, and a flash of his pass to get access to the ice. Viktor pauses in the green room to check his skates for damage and slip on the hard guards. Now that he’s at the rink, he feels the _need_ to be on the ice, like a string tugging just under his sternum.

But when he walks out to the barely-lit rink, it’s to a sight that stops his breath.

Yuuri is skating, clean and precise and without a hint of the pain that racked him at the GPF, only months ago. The cool blueish emergency lighting casts him in silver gilt, as he moves through a step sequence, something simple but flashy.

It’s like watching someone dream, or compose, as Yuuri bends into a layback Ina Bauer with the flexibility of a man half his age. Viktor gave up on that move at eighteen, and Yuuri is over thirty, but the arch of his spine still looks effortless.

Viktor settles, silently, to watch, and the only sound in the rink is the soft scrape of Yuuri’s skates as he moves. Spread eagle into triple axel, effortless. A slightly underrotated quadruple salchow, a flying sit spin.

In the silent rink, Viktor can almost  _hear_  the music Yuuri is skating to, light and fun and competitive. He moves through the barest sketch of a step-sequence, and there are hints of a melody, the slow build of music. It’s compelling, if not complete, and Viktor is enthralled.

If this is where Nishigori’s choreography begins, it’s no wonder that it’s both beautiful and some of the most difficult Juniors choreography currently on the circuit. Yuuri skates like a man in the middle of competitive training, not someone who has been retired for nearly a decade. Viktor has been out of competition for less time that Yuuri has, and he  _knows_  that if he tried some of the tricks Yuuri is idly practicing, he’d fall on his face.

As if to drive it home, Yuuri sets up, and then executes a flawless quadruple loop, every movement of his body poetry.

Slowly Yuuri moves into something more complete, more realized, still effortless, but there’s a change to the style of it. This has the air of something  _practiced_ , something that Yuuri has made his own through constant repetition.

It’s familiar, too, and as Viktor watches, he can feel it, in his bones. Loneliness, longing. Someone reaching out for something that they aren’t sure they’ll find.

A quadruple lutz, clean and perfect, and then–Oh.

 _Oh_.

Of course.

He can’t help the gasp as Yuuri leaps into the quadruple flip, landing it with only the slightest wobble.

 _Stammi Vicino_. Now that he’s recognized it, Viktor can all but hear the music, like when it was all that played in his head for an entire year. Yuuri skates it with consummate grace, with endless feeling.

It’s the same flawless presence and precise technique that has let Yuuri hold a world record for longer than anyone in figure skating history. There are videos analyzing Yuuri’s  _Infernal Dance_  from Four Continents from every angle, there are complete breakdowns of how it was scored. People have repeated it over and over and over, choreographed dozens programs that should outscore it. The record stands. No one makes it to the end without downgrades or falls, Viktor remembers trying.

Yuuri keeps skating, never missing a beat of the music, every piece of Viktor’s choreography exactly replicated and somehow not Viktor’s at all. Right here, right now, the entire program belongs to Yuuri. The quad toe-triple toe combination that had always been the hardest part for Viktor is performed with a kind of honest grace, as though gravity has no hold on Yuuri but what he allows.

Viktor has never liked seeing other people perform his routines, but this one he thinks, this one he could give away and never regret it.

Yuuri enters the combination spin without so much of a hint of fatigue, and when he comes out of it, he falls into the ending pose with the grace of someone sinking into something deeply familiar. It’s different though–Viktor had been holding air, utterly lonely, at the end of the program. Yuuri’s arms are looser, just slightly, the arch of his back deeper, the angle of his neck changed. The differences are minute, but all together, the change is striking.

Instead of emptiness, the shape of the pose Yuuri holds suggests an invisible partner, Yuuri’s arms caught around their neck, his forehead pressed to theirs.

Viktor’s desperate plea was never answered. It looks like Yuuri’s was.

There’s no reason for the hollow aching that the realization leaves in Viktor’s chest, but it comes anyway. The change makes the program better, lightens the dragging sadness of the ending into something less all-consumingly melancholic. Viktor could never have skated it.

“I know you’re there,” Yuuri calls as he relaxes out of the pose. “You can come over.”

Blood flushes hot in Viktor’s cheeks, but he steps out of the doorway anyway, walking towards Yuuri until he’s leaning against the boards.

“Did you like it?” Yuuri asks him, the tilt of his mouth mostly amused. “I never meant anyone to see it, but I suppose you have the most right.”

“It was…”  _stunning, perfect, awe-inspiring_  “incredible. Better than I ever skated it.”

Yuuri ducks his head, smiling slightly, and the bashful gesture makes something warm bloom in Viktor’s stomach.

“Different maybe,” he compromises. “I wouldn’t say better.”

 _No, better_ , Viktor wants to say.  _You skate love in that routine, and I was empty._

“You were beautiful,” he says instead of arguing, and his voice is too-loud in the echoing silence of the rink. “Why did you retire?”

Yuuri shrugs, skating absentminded loops. Viktor reminds himself of Masha’s reticence, Yuri’s deflection, grasps his patience with both hands and  _waits_. He’s the intruder here. Answers will come on Yuuri’s time.

“I’m sick,” Yuuri finally says, and his voice is serene. “It’s been a good few weeks, but I can’t guarantee when my good weeks are. I couldn’t get out of bed during the Sochi GPF, and for the entire month of Worlds, every muscle in my body hurt. I couldn’t compete if I couldn’t be…sure.”

There’s a wealth of information going unsaid, but Viktor has learned not to push. If he leaves space open, Yuuri will gradually move to fill it, but pushing only makes Yuuri draw back.

Yuuri carves another perfect loop into the ice, and then makes his way to where Viktor is standing at the boards. He takes a place just a few inches away, leaning back against the wall, his elbows hooked over the top, hands dangling loosely. Viktor can feel the fever-warmth of him, they’re so close, almost thinks he can feel the faint movement of the air as Yuuri sighs. “It’s silly,” he says. “I didn’t expect it to be a world record, let alone to stand for this long.”

“What did you expect?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t really skating for scores, then. I was just so  _angry_ , and I wanted everyone to be suffering just as much as I was.”

“And you ended up with the world record.”

“I didn’t believe it, you know?” Yuuri says, turning his head to favor Viktor with a half-smile. “I thought there had to be some kind of mistake with the scores.”

“Perfect PCS, near-perfect GOE across the board, the addition of features and extra jump elements–you didn’t know what you were doing?”

Yuuri shrugs. “ When I was practicing alone–being sick made me so angry, I’d make the program harder just so I couldn’t think about anything else. I never bothered to add up the base values.”

The sound Viktor makes is as undignified as it is outraged, but he can’t even bring himself to be embarrassed. “Never  _bothered_ –” he says, and only Yuuri’s ringing peal of laughter keeps him from continuing.

“You sound just like Celestino did,” Yuuri says, and when Viktor dares to glance over, Yuuri’s expression is light, his eyes practically glowing with amusement. “He couldn’t decide if he wanted to kill me for how hard I made the program, or hug me for how impressive the record was.”

“Why would he want to kill you?”

Yuuri sighs, tilting his head back to stare at the ceiling. “It’s stupid and embarrassing.”

“I’m virtually certain I did worse, while I was skating,” Viktor says, his eyes fixed on the gorgeous line of Yuuri’s throat. His mouth moves without conscious input from his brain. “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

A laugh, and Yuuri’s amber eyes meet his. “I  _know_ you didn’t do anything stupider, but I’ll take you up on it.”

Viktor can’t help the way he smiles, leaning a little further over the boards so that his shoulders brush a little against Yuuri’s.

“So?” he asks, and Yuuri shakes his head before shifting his weight and pressing their shoulders closer together.

“Nationals was two weeks after the GPF I missed because of my illness,” he starts, which sounds a little like a non-sequitur. Viktor reminds himself  _patience_ , and does not ask a question.

“I wasn’t recovered,” Yuuri continues. “Not really. But I didn’t want missing the GPF to be the end of my season. So I decided to skate anyway. I’m still not sure how I convinced Ciao Ciao that I would be okay, actually.

“It hurt,” Yuuri says, and there’s a tiny quirk to the corner of his mouth that Viktor doesn’t like or understand. “It hurt a  _lot_. But I won my nationals. And then, apparently pretty much as soon as I didn’t have an audience–” he claps his hands together, the sound muffled by his gloves “–I collapsed. Too much strain on my body.”

Viktor hisses. He’s seen Yuuri’s last Nationals on video–it’s one of the things that people like to do, analyze that comparatively lackluster performance against Four Continents and theorize about what made the difference. No one ever considered that not being in  _excruciating pain_  might be the answer.

“Yeah, well,” Yuuri says. “I was an idiot. But the JSF sent me to Four Continents anyway, even though for the first week after Nationals I could barely get out of bed. I got better, and I realized that I couldn’t do another season, when I could be sick so unexpectedly and pushing could end so badly. Which pissed me off. So I came up with all kinds of stupid variations on the program, whatever I could land. And then Four Continents came, and I just…put everything in.”

There’s a long moment, as Yuuri’s words linger between them.

“Wow,” Viktor finally says, softly.

Yuuri laughs, a short, sharp bark. “It’s not glamorous, I know. I was just pissed off.”

“That didn’t stop it from being beautiful,” Viktor says, and Yuuri just snorts, rolling his shoulders like the praise makes him uncomfortable.

“You owe me now,” he says. “What’s your stupidest, most embarrassing story?”

Viktor shrugs. “It’s similar to yours, actually. I stress-fractured my foot during Russian Nationals once, early on in my Senior career. The actual fracture probably happened a few days before, but I was so insistent that I couldn’t lose, so I skated in nationals ignoring the pain. Turned it into a major fracture. I fell halfway through my free, and I couldn’t get back up.”

“I remember that,” Yuuri says. “It ended your season.”

Surprised, Viktor flicks a glance at Yuuri. “Most people don’t. It was ages ago.”

Yuuri shrugs a little, but Viktor can see the blush rising in his cheeks.

“You were one of the reasons I started skating seriously. I kept track of your career.”

Viktor stares.

“What?” Yuuri asks, blushing darker. “I’m sure I wasn’t the only one.”

“Yuu _ri_ ,” Viktor says, and he can’t help throwing his arms around Yuuri, resting his chin on one shoulder. “You started skating for  _me_?”

For a moment, Yuuri is stiff and startled in his arms, before he relaxes back into Viktor’s grip. “I started skating because my teacher Minako suggested it,” he corrects dryly. “I started skating competitively because of you.”

“I’m still flattered,” Viktor purrs, and he can practically  _feel_  Yuuri rolling his eyes.

“Like you need more flattery in your life,” he says, before shrugging a little in Viktor’s hold. Viktor lets go, and Yuuri glides a few feet from the boards, before crossing one arm over his chest in an easy stretch.

He’s beautiful, easy in his own skin and dancer-graceful. It makes Viktor ache, not for the first time, for what could have been. If Yuuri hadn’t been ill at the GPF or Worlds, if the ISU had changed just a few Grand Prix assignments. If Viktor had noticed something other than his own depression for the few years they skated past each other like ships in the night.

But here, now, there is an empty rink, and there’s Yuuri.

“Can I join you?” Viktor asks, finally taking his blade guards off and moving towards the entrance to the rink.

Yuuri seems to startle, a full-body shiver going through him as he checks his watch and then looks up at Viktor, shrugging with a casualness that’s out of place, given how close they were just moments ago.

“You can have the ice,” he says, gathering up a water bottle and pair of skate guards Viktor hadn’t noticed. “I’ve been here for hours. I should let you skate, and go to sleep.”

“Come on,” Viktor says, gently teasing. “I danced with you last time we met. Skate with me, this time?”

Yuuri pauses, looking conflicted.

“Please?” Viktor asks, his voice turning coaxing. “I want to see your flip again.”

“I’m coaching tomorrow,” Yuuri says, but he seems to be wavering.

“Axel doesn’t have to compete until the afternoon. You can sleep in.” When Yuuri still looks hesitant, Viktor adds, “Please?”

A sigh, and then Yuuri rolls his eyes and steps fully back onto the ice. “You just want me to show you  _Infernal Dance_  in person.”

“I’d love that,” Viktor admits easily. “But I also want to spend time with a friend I only ever got to text for the last three months.”

For a split second, Yuuri’s eyes seem to gleam gold, before he shakes his head and pushes off.

“No  _Dance_ today,” he says. “I’ve been skating for too long tonight. Another time.”

Viktor laughs.

“Another time,” he agrees, beginning to warm up. The unsteady tension that made it impossible to sleep is already fading, loosening against the ingrained serenity of the ice.

Yuuri skates idly around him, easy, elegant crossovers and yet more figures.

“A flip?” Viktor asks, tilting his head slightly to give Yuuri a pleading look.

Yuuri laughs, soft and affectionate, before he starts to skate across the rink, beginning to set up a jump as familiar to Viktor as his own name.

And then he kicks into the air, a perfect quad flip, so clean that Viktor can’t help but applaud.

Yuuri shakes his head, but he’s smiling still.

“Show me your triple axel?” he asks, and Viktor makes a pathetic noise, before complying. Axels have never been his favorite–he’s done more than his share of them, but that doesn’t mean he  _likes_  them.

As he lands, it doesn’t feel clean, and he sighs as he straightens, turning back to Yuuri.

“You’re rusty,” Yuuri teases, before leaping into an axel of his own, nearly from a standstill.

“We don’t all train the undisputed queen of axels, Yuuri.”

“Of course not,” Yuuri says, sounding supremely satisfied. “Where do you think she learned it?”

* * *

They skate for nearly half an hour, trading jump and spin requests between them, before Viktor pauses. There’s a question he’s been turning over since he saw Yuuri skate a program almost a decade old for no one at all.

“Why did you learn  _Stammi Vicino_?” he asks, and Yuuri shrugs carelessly, like it doesn’t matter.

“I got bored of being depressed, that first year I was retired. My friend and I used to copy your routines, when we were kids. So I taught myself  _Stammi Vicino_ , to see if it would help.”

“Did it?”

Yuuri sighs, skating a lap. “Yes and no. I liked learning it, but it just made me miss competing more.”

“We missed you too,” Viktor says, and Yuuri laughs, one bright peal of amusement.

“You still know the program, though,” Viktor continues, “eight years later.”

Yuuri snorts. “Oh, and you don’t? I bet you can skate it right now.”

Viktor laughs a little, skating a few easy twizzles just for the satisfaction of it, before coming to a stop.

“True,” he admits. “Will you skate it with me, though?”

Yuuri just shakes his head and makes his way towards center ice, the movement itself an invitation.

“You start,” Yuuri says, taking the easy opening pose of  _Stammi Vicino_. “I’ll follow you.”

Viktor breathes, and takes center, Yuuri just a few meters away from him.

It takes a moment to call the melancholy strings back, the heart-sung longing, and then Viktor begins.

It’s been a long time since Viktor could casually throw out four quads in a program, and here, in an empty rink, next to a man who Viktor knows through YouTube videos and dryly funny text messages, he doesn’t even try. Instead, he lets the difficulty lapse, sinks into the longing instead.

Skating  _Stammi Vicino_  again is strange, familiar and unfamiliar all at once. He’s never really forgotten the program, but he hasn’t felt the need to skate it over again in years.

Yuuri skates around him, and that’s strange too, having another skater so close as he performs. But Yuuri is graceful, and Yuuri gives him space, and Yuuri does not bother to downgrade a single jump.

Still, he comes closer as the program wears on, and Viktor finds himself altering his steps to accommodate, shifting a program for one into what's almost a pairs routine. He keeps his attention on Yuuri, who orbits carefully, cutting across the ice like meteor, bright and brave, always coming closer.

They end, close together, now in a partnered version of Yuuri’s ending–Viktor has one arm supporting the dip of Yuuri’s back, while Yuuri’s fingers are laced behind Viktor’s neck. Their faces are close enough that Viktor can feel Yuuri’s breath on his lips.

“You changed the ending,” he says. “Why?”

Yuuri shrugs, his spine straightening against Viktor’s hand as he shifts his balance. “It seemed too sad. It’s about…wanting someone to love, to hold onto. Your ending didn’t match the music. ‘ _Partiamo insieme, ora sono pronto_ ’” he quotes. “‘Let’s leave now, I’m ready.’ In the end, love comes.”

Viktor feels like there is a hand gently squeezing the breath out of his lungs, and the arms looped around his neck are hot, even through the cloth that separates them.

“ _Yuuri_ ,” he says, softly. “You can’t just say things like that.”

“Why not?” Yuuri asks, and there’s a flutter of dark lashes, Yuuri’s amber eyes lowering for a moment before he meets Viktor’s gaze again. There’s something warm and fierce in his expression, and it makes that gentle hand against Viktor’s lungs tighten, sets Viktor’s pulse to thundering.

Yuuri is smiling, just the faintest curl to the corner of his mouth, and Viktor can feel his heart beating double time in his chest.

And then Yuuri’s hands shift, the heels of his palms pressing gently against Viktor’s jaw, as he stretches up, just slightly, and presses their lips together.

It’s sweet, almost chaste, but the whole world might as well start and end with the warmth of Yuuri’s body, the weight of his spine against Viktor’s hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> they finally kiss in this one guys


	5. moon

**Masha Volkova**  @masha_volk  
 _@sukeota3sisters Congrats on silver, #axelnishigori! #worlds2021_

 **Lo+Lz+A Nishigori**  @sukeota3sisters  
 _Axel changed out her triple loops for lutzes because i’m actually her favorite sister –Lutz #Worlds2021 #axelnishigori_

 **Lo+Lz+A Nishigori**  @sukeota3sisters  
 _She changed it for points, we all know that Yuuri wouldn’t let her change jumps based on who she likes more (it’s still me) –Loop #Worlds2021 #axelnishigori_

 **Lo+Lz+A Nishigori**  @sukeota3sisters  
 _(I actually changed it for the extra base value AND because Lutz is my favorite sister, but let’s just keep that between me and the 300k of you following me, yeah? –Axel) #itsasecret #noonetellloop_

 **Lo+Lz+A Nishigori**  @sukeota3sisters  
 _I hate this h*cking family –Loop #betrayed_

 **Levi**  @spllbndstars  
 _Does anyone else think that like 75% of the comedy in @sukeota3sisters tweets is that the three of them act like they don’t use the same acct and see all of each other’s tweets because tbh that’s what cracks me up most of the time_

* * *

 **Lo+Lz+A Nishigori**  @sukeota3sisters  
 _Congrats on first place in the short @yuri_plisetsky! Looking forward to seeing your free tomorrow! –Loop + Lutz #worlds2021 #yuriplisetsky_

 **Lo+Lz+A Nishigori**  @sukeota3sisters  
 _Also congrats to @a_kuzetsov!! The new short program is pretty cool, and taking fourth with a brand new program is amazing! –Loop + Lutz #worlds2021 #alexeikuzetsov_

 **Lo+Lz+A Nishigori**  @sukeota3sisters  
 _So ready to see @masha_volk skate in a couple days! Still the best Russian skater I know –Axel #worlds2021 #maryavolkova #yuriplisetskywho_

* * *

By the time that Viktor’s students are skating, Axel has secured herself a debut Worlds silver, which she seems more pleased with than her Four Continents medal.

“Diaz wasn’t at Four Continents,” Yuuri explains over dinner, once he’s finished congratulating Viktor on his students' placements. “Axel thought it should be easier to beat Karanot with half the competition gone. Here, the field is deeper. She skated her best, and we’re both satisfied”

After that, their conversation moves away from work. Yuuri talks with obvious fondness about both Detroit and his hometown, and Viktor does his best to explain the heady magic of St. Petersburg’s White Nights. They talk about dogs–past and present–and Viktor can’t help showing off more than a few pictures of Katerina.

It’s fun, almost electric, to sit in the small restaurant that Yuuri found and talk about things other than skating, like he’s an ordinary person. Dinner takes hours, mostly because they’re too absorbed in their conversation to notice everyone else leaving the restaurant. Eventually, it’s the pointed stares of the staff, and Viktor thinking to check his phone that drive them out.

The air outside the restaurant is icy, and Viktor shudders a little, hunching deeper into his coat. Somehow, Yuuri seems entirely unconcerned with the weather, though his jacket is almost certainly thinner than Viktor’s coat. Instead of shivering, Yuuri just takes a deep breath, exhaling a cloud of white.

“I should head back to the hotel,” Viktor says suddenly, because the cold is flushing Yuuri’s cheeks pink, and there’s a strand of his hair caught in the frame of his glasses that Viktor wants to brush aside so badly his fingers itch. “I hope I remember how to get there, though…”

Yuuri laughs, shoulders loose, and Viktor would do anything for him to do it again, to laugh, free and gentle, even if it is at Viktor’s expense.

“Thank you for dinner,” he says, and he can feel himself smiling, sweet and easy in a way he hasn’t for years. “I had fun.”

“I’m glad,” Yuuri says, and his responding smile is small but genuine, crinkling at the corners of his eyes. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Of course,” Viktor says, and the crinkles at the corners of Yuuri’s eyes deepen. God, Viktor wants to kiss them, to taste the sweetness of Yuuri’s smile on his skin.

“Tomorrow, then,” Yuuri says, swaying close to brush a gentle kiss across his mouth. “Good night, Viktor.”

Viktor can feel himself blushing pink, and he raises one hand to touch his lips, still a little startled at the turn their relationship has taken, at Yuuri’s boldness. Yuuri’s smile just sharpens, revealing a playful flash of white teeth, before he draws back and walks away.

“Good night, Yuuri,” Viktor finally manages, nearly a minute later, with Yuuri long out of earshot.

He’s still blushing and his heart pounding in his chest, but he also hasn’t stopped smiling. Tilting his head back, he catches sight of the moon, hanging high in the clear sky.

It’s beautiful, just past half-full, and Viktor tucks his hands a little deeper into his pockets as he looks up. Like in St. Petersburg, and all of the other cities he’s lived in, the stars in Debrecen are nearly invisible, but it’s fine. The moon is lovely, the air is crisp, and Yuuri has kissed him again. Everything is perfect.

Viktor’s lips still tingle faintly from the brush of Yuuri’s mouth, and he has to restrain himself from touching them again, to remind himself that the kiss really did happen.

There’s a glowing bit of warmth curled up in Viktor’s chest, and it makes him want to dance, to skate, to choreograph.

The air is still bitterly cold, but as Viktor makes his way back to the hotel, he doesn’t feel it as badly.

* * *

Viktor is maybe a  _little_  lost. His phone’s GPS can’t get a perfect fix, so while he’s mostly sure he’s in the right place, he’s not quite confident enough to look up from his phone more than once every minute or so.

Which is fine, because it’s late enough he’s not likely to run into any other pedestrians.

He’s not prepared for the hand that wraps tight around his forearm and  _yanks_ , making him drop his phone, pulling him into an alley he hadn’t even known was there.

There’s a blur of furious motion and bright pain, and when Viktor can make sense of things again, his wrists are behind his back, caught in a crushing grip, while two people in black–young men, maybe?–stand between him and the mouth of the alley.

It’s unnerving, but Viktor forces his breathing to slow, tries to calm the racing of his heart.

It’s not the first time he’s been in a situation like this–he used to wander St. Petersburg late at night too, and he wasn’t always the best at keeping to well-lit streets or good neighborhoods. Usually it was just one teenager, but Viktor’s learned how to hand over his wallet and walk away. He’s not worried.

“Viktor Nikiforov,” one of the men says, and Viktor feels his stomach drop. He’s used to being recognized only by a very narrow set–competitive figure skating is fairly niche. It’s not something he’d expect young men in a dark alley in Hungary to follow.

“I’m sorry?” he says, trying for politeness, trying to stall for time.

Another of the trio gives an irritated growl before he leans in close to Viktor. He’s wearing a black mask, and all Viktor can see are a pair of gleaming eyes. The man doesn’t seem amused, but he doesn’t seem desperate either, not like the others of his ilk that Viktor has met.

“Why don’t you let the Volkov know that they better cut their shit?” he says, instead of asking for money or valuables, and Viktor feels something cold clutch his heart.

This isn’t a random mugging at all. This is personal, this is about Marya’s family–Marya’s family that does not understand their skater daughter, Marya’s family that pays for her to skate and compete and never once comes to see her.

“I’m not certain what you are talking about,” he says, careful. “I am not close with Marya’s parents–”

“Stop bullshitting,” a new voice says. “You take their money, you train their daughter. Tell them to cut the shit, or they won’t have you  _or_  her anymore.”

“I  _can’t_ ,” Viktor tries to explain, “They don’t talk to me, I’m just her  _coach_.”

A hand–Viktor isn’t sure whose–impacts with his face, snapping his head to one side, setting his skull to ringing.

When he can look up again, his mouth is full of the sick-copper taste of blood, and his cheek is smarting.

“I don’t even know what Marya’s family  _does_ ,” he tries to explain. “They don’t–”

“Don’t lie to us,” someone growls in his ear. “We’re not idiots.”

One corner of Viktor’s mind, which has no regard for the situation he’s in, mutters,  _are you sure about that?_  but he forces himself to keep his mouth shut. Yuri will notice that he’s not back from dinner soon–it’s already past when he told his student they’d discuss his short. Yuri will call the police, he’ll be found, the muggers will scatter, he’ll ask Marya what they wanted with her family, everything is going to be  _fine_.

It’s going to be fine.

“What’s going on here?” a familiar voice says, breaking into the scenario Viktor has spun himself, and he closes his eyes.

It’s not going to be fine.

Of course it’s Yuuri.  _Yuuri_ , who is bright and strong and so often in pain. Of course he’d be the one to walk into this. Viktor’s bad luck is as spectacular as it is rare.

“None of your  _business_ , American,” one of the trio says, and Viktor can’t contain the confused giggle at exactly why a Hungarian punk thinks that Yuuri is an American.

There’s the sound of a long, slow breath, and Viktor can’t stand this. This is his problem, this is about his student, it shouldn’t hurt Yuuri too.

Struggling upright against the man holding him hurts, a grinding pain in his wrists, but it’s worth it to meet Yuuri’s eyes and snap out, “Get  _out of here_.”

It’s a good day for Yuuri, it’s been good days all this week. He’s beautiful, even standing at the mouth of a filthy Hungarian alleyway, and he shouldn’t be involved in this. He doesn’t need to be hurt any more than his illness already hurts him.

“Viktor,” Yuuri breathes, and he looks shocked, almost guilty for some reason.

“He told you to go away, American,” one of the thugs says. “This is  _none of your business_.”

There’s a shift in Yuuri’s expression, coldness creeping across his face like frost. “I think it is,” he says, calmly. “We’re friends. We look after each other.”

“He’ll be fine when we’re done.”

Fingers tighten around Viktor’s wrists, and he can’t help the whimper that crawls out of his throat.

Yuuri’s eyes snap to Viktor’s, and there’s something not quite right with them, something indefinably  _off_  from the Yuuri that Viktor knows.

“I don’t believe you,” Yuuri says, conversational. He shrugs his shoulders, takes off his glasses and tucks them into his jacket. Then he takes one step into the alleyway, another, and conversational melts away. Out of the glow from the streetlamps, Yuuri’s eyes begin to  _shine_ , sulfur yellow. His lips peel back in an expression that is nothing like a smile, showing off inhumanly sharp, white teeth, long and pointed and made for tearing.

Yuuri snarls, an impossibly deep, feral sound, and Viktor hears his captor hiss on an indrawn breath.

The two men not holding Viktor close in on Yuuri, who just snarls again and dispatches them both easily, one with an elbow to the face, the other with a kick to the solar plexus. As they fall, Yuuri steps forward, and if it weren’t for the glow of his eyes and the way his lips are skinned back from his teeth, it would almost seem casual. Controlled.

It looks nothing short of  _lethal_  instead.

“ _Let him go_ ,” Yuuri says, and the threat is obvious.

“No,” the man holding Viktor’s wrists says, dragging him deeper in the alleyway. “No, so long as I have him you can’t touch me–”

“Wrong.”

Viktor can’t process anything beyond the  _impression_  of movement, before his wrists are free, and the person who was just behind him is now in front of him, and in Yuuri’s hands.

Viktor’s legs collapse from beneath him, and he finds himself stumbling to one side, sliding down the wall of the alleyway until he’s sitting down. The realization that his clothes are never going to be the same again manages to idly wander across his thoughts, while he stares at Yuuri.

Yuuri, with his savage, moon-white grin and his glowing yellow eyes.

Yuuri, who is currently slamming someone’s face into a wall, with a visceral  _crunch_ , like fracturing bone.

When he draws back, the man falls limply to the ground, and Yuuri just rumbles a quiet, satisfied noise.

Viktor is frozen, staring, as Yuuri steps over the body and crouches in front of him.

“Are you okay?” Yuuri asks. His voice is soft and ordinary, without a trace of earlier snarl, and Viktor has never been further from okay. Yuuri’s eyes are still glowing, there’s something wrong with his student’s family, and one of the thugs is  _standing up behind Yuuri_ –

He doesn’t even manage to get a word of warning out before Yuuri turns, stands, and backhands the man across the face.

The movement looks casual, but what happens in response is anything but–the man folds like a ragdoll, his head slamming into the opposite side of the alleyway with devastating force.

Another one of the trio swings what looks like a pipe at Yuuri’s head, and Viktor tries to shout a warning, as Yuuri puts up a hand to guard his face in what has to be an instinctive motion–

–except that the pipe smacks to a dead halt in Yuuri’s palm, filling the alley with a faint metallic ringing. Viktor can’t quite see what Yuuri does after that, but it ends with the pipe still in Yuuri’s hand, and the other man on the ground, groaning, with Yuuri pointing the pipe at his face.

“I told you to  _leave_ ,” Yuuri says, and Viktor can hear  _danger_  in his voice, something fierce and raging.

The man that Yuuri backhanded across the alley stumbles to his feet, leaning against the wall, and growls, a similarly deep, inhuman sound to Yuuri’s. “He’s working with the Volkov–you know what they’re like–”

“He’s a  _figure skating coach_ ,” Yuuri snaps back, not even turning to look. There’s a threat curling under his even tone. “Marya Volkova has nothing to do with your problem with her family. And if I find out that you’re taking this grudge out on her, or anyone associated with her, again, I’ll call up my friends with the Colts and tell them that you people are  _exactly_  what their mandate demands be destroyed. Am I understood?”

Viktor can see just enough of the thug leaning against the wall to see him go pale at Yuuri’s words. He swallows, convulsively, and the fight goes out of him.

“Go,” Yuuri growls, once the point has sunk in, and the thug against the wall pulls his friend, whose pipe Yuuri still holds, to his feet, before they collect the man whose face Yuuri introduced to a brick wall. They leave the alleyway at a shuffling run–likely the best they can do with an unconscious body carried between them.

Yuuri watches them go for a long moment, before he rolls his shoulders deliberately, as though working out tension. He tosses the pipe aside in a single irritated motion, and it clatters to the ground, a startling, unmusical sound that makes Viktor twitch a little.

“Fucking  _Euros_ ,” he hisses, sounding for a moment exactly like Yura does when he’s particularly pissed off about JJ. “Always thinking with their  _teeth_.”

Silhouetted by the light from the mouth of the alleyway, Yuuri looks like some kind of latter-day avenging angel. What little of his expression Viktor can see is furious, and his eyes still shine like no human’s should.

His shoulders roll again, this time accompanied by a slow, deliberate exhale, before Yuuri turns sharply on his heel and walks to stand by Viktor’s feet.

“Can you stand?” he asks, and Viktor just laughs, the sound slightly hysterical even to his own ears.

“That sounds like a no,” Yuuri says, and he just sighs softly as he sinks into a crouch in front of Viktor. “I can wait, then. Are you hurt anywhere?”

It takes a moment for the question to penetrate, to make sense past the fog of panic and confusion filling Viktor’s brain. Once it does make sense, it takes nearly another minute for Viktor to hold out his wrists from where he’s been cradling them against his chest. They ache a little, from the bone-grindingly tight grip that held them, but it’s not so bad now that they’re free.

“You’re lucky that Plisetsky has no patience,” Yuuri says, taking Viktor’s hands in his own. “I was going to head back out to check in with some local friends, but he grabbed me in the lobby and demanded to know where you were. So I came looking instead.”

There’s guilt, lingering in the set of Yuuri’s brow, in the flatness of his mouth and voice.

It takes a moment for Viktor to remember how to speak, to let go of fear.

“I got a little lost, walking back,” he says, keeping his eyes fixed on his wrists, as Yuuri begins to examine them. “I told Yura we were going to dinner, and I’d talk to him after, but they grabbed me while I was looking at my phone.”

There’s the faintest growl from Yuuri, but the pressure on Viktor’s wrists remains feather-light, as Yuuri examines where strong hands held. Yuuri’s protectiveness is almost comforting, even feral as it is.

“You’re going to bruise,” Yuuri says, soft and furious, and the rumble in his voice sends a bolt of  _something_ –fear or excitement, Viktor’s not sure which–down Viktor’s spine.

“I’m sure I’ve had worse,” he says, and Yuuri just snarls softly.

“You shouldn’t have been injured at all,” he says, before raising one hand to Viktor’s chin, tilting his head until his injured cheek is in the light.

“How does it look?” Viktor asks, trying for levity and not quite finding it.

There’s another snarl, rising up from deep in Yuuri’s chest, and his lip curls, revealing one sharp canine tooth.

“That bad, then?” Viktor asks, smiling slightly as he tries to make light of the situation. The motion tugs at the split in his lip, and he can’t help wincing slightly. Yuuri zeroes in on the motion instantly, and he makes an angry noise.

“I should have brought silver,” Yuuri says, and his voice is quiet and terrible. “They don’t deserve to heal as quickly as they’re going to.”

He runs his thumb over Viktors lip, so lightly Viktor can barely feel it, but his yellow eyes are murderous for all that gentleness.

“Yuuri,” Viktor says softly. “Yuuri. It’s okay. I’m fine.”

“You’re hurt,” Yuuri corrects, but some of the dangerous tightness eases out of him.

“It’s not that bad,” Viktor says. “And I heal quickly.”

Yuuri sighs softly. “You shouldn’t have been involved,” he says, brushing his thumb over Viktor’s lip again. “The Volkov family made their stance on Marya very clear years ago. No one should have come after either of you.”

This is the second time tonight someone has known more about Marya’s family than Viktor has, and the way Yuuri puts it– _made their stance very clear_ –is chilling.

“Yuuri,” Viktor says softly, reaching up to touch his wrist. “What’s going on?”

He thinks he knows–what with Yuuri’s yellow eyes and the snarling and the teeth and the mention of silver–but it doesn’t make any  _sense_. The real world doesn’t work that way.

Yuuri just barks a mirthless laugh and says, “Werewolves, Viktor. Fucking  _euro werewolves_.”

Viktor’s breath stills, and he looks up at Yuuri.

The sulfur glow is going out of his eyes, and he looks nothing but concerned, but Viktor can’t stop seeing his smile, like the sickle-curve of a crazed moon. The satisfaction in it, when he put a man’s face into a brick wall.

Viktor’s memory retraces the perfect placement of Yuuri’s strikes, the inhuman force he exerted, the  _rage_  of his snarl.

His thumb is still surpassingly gentle at the corner of Viktor’s mouth, and he can almost certainly feel the rabbit-quickness of Viktor’s pulse.

“Oh,” Viktor says, dumbly.

He’s still on autopilot–most of his higher thinking taken over by a single continuous scream at the thought that his best friend, who he kissed in a dark rink two days ago, is a goddamn  _werewolf_.

“I don’t–” he says, stumbling to be understood, to put his own thoughts in order.. “What–where we do go from here?”

Yuuri’s expression goes blank, and head bows, his shoulders hunching over at Viktor’s words, and it  _hurts_.

“You’re a werewolf,” he says, trying to explain himself, to break through the unnerving quietness. Like if he says it out loud, it’s going to make the truth any less  _impossible_. “What am I supposed to–are you going to be in trouble?”

“It’s fine.” Yuuri says, and there’s something very still in his voice that breaks Viktor’s heart. “Let’s get your phone and I’ll take you back to the hotel. As long as you don’t run around screaming about us, you can do whatever you want.”

“Yuuri,” Viktor says, softly, reaching out to lay a hand on his shoulder.

Yuuri steps back, rising to his feet in a movement that would be carelessly graceful, but for how far from Viktor the motion takes him, but for the awkward way he holds his shoulder as far from Viktor as he can.

“If you want more information you could…come to Hasetsu, sometime,” Yuuri says, still not looking at Viktor. “I’ll show you what it–what I’m like.”

Viktor looks at Yuuri, who coolly backhanded a man across an alleyway not even half an hour ago, and now shies from Viktor like he expects to be hurt.

It’s startling, just how wrong that feels.

Forcing himself to his feet, using the wall of the alleyway to support himself, Viktor looks at Yuuri, whose face is still blank, turned away.

“I think,” Viktor says softly, “that I would like that.”

Yuuri’s head snaps around, his expression startled. It’s like he didn’t expect Viktor to agree, like he thought that this would outweigh all the months of Viktor’s careful flirting.

His eyes, still more gold than brown, search Viktor’s face for a long moment, before his mouth softens slightly.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay.”


	6. shapeshifter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome to the Long Chapter. This chapter is the reason this fic took 2+ months, i'm not even joking.

[a short video, clearly shot at Hasetsu Ice Castle. Katsuki Yuuri is leaning up against the boards. He looks up to grin at the camera, shaking his head for a moment before giving in with exaggerated unwillingness. He skates away from the boards, and takes off into a clean triple axel. As he skates back, he calls something to the camera, and the video cuts off.]  
 **sukeota3sisters:**  in case you were wondering, Yuuri still kicks ass on ice –Lutz #wheredoyouthinkaxellearnedit #freeskateking #hecalleditPASSABLE #biteme #katsukiyuuri #yuurikatsuki

[a selfie of Axel Nishigori and Yuuri Katsuki. Axel is grinning excitedly and has one arm wrapped around Yuuri, who looks both amused and exasperated]  
 **sukeota3sisters:**  just started picking music for next season! Yuuri keeps telling me to stop giving him pop music… –Axel #butiLIKEpopmusic #compromiseswillbemade #yuuriisanoldmanwholistenstotoomuchclassical #biteme #axelnishigori #nishigoriaxel #katsukiyuuri #yuurikatsuki #freeskateking

* * *

It takes nearly a month before Viktor can take Yuuri up on his offer to visit Hasetsu. As much as he might have liked to chase Yuuri back to Hasetsu as soon as the opportunity presented himself, Viktor’s responsibilities are too important.

Also, he would probably have made it to Hasetsu and promptly been slaughtered by Yura for leaving his students in the lead up to the World Team Trophy. Alyosha and Masha would have helped to hide his body. So in the end, a portion of his restraint is purely self-preservation.

Semantics.

He self-medicates missing Yuuri with a lot of time scrolling through the instagram and twitter accounts that Axel shares with her sisters. Now that the secret of her coach’s identity is out, Axel has no problems posting pictures or videos of Yuuri, some of them flattering, a good portion of them not.

Viktor’s guilty favorite is one of Yuuri passed out on a locker room bench, his JSF jacket being used as a pillow. Axel has captioned it "sleeping prince".

* * *

Three days after the World Team Trophy, Yuri drops Viktor off at the airport, with several scathing comments about international booty calls. Viktor just smiles, and gives back as good as he gets, but once he and Katerina are through security, the cool confidence fades.

It’s easy to pretend he’s taking the first weeks of the off-season for romance when Yuri is in front of him. On his own, he has no such excuse.

“Well, Katen’ka,” he murmurs, as they make their way to their first gate. “Here goes nothing.”

The trip is almost fifteen hours to Fukuoka, and the layovers are exhausting. By the time Viktor is stumbling onto the train to Hasetsu, he’s swinging wildly between wanting to just collapse into bed and being unable to sit still because of his combined excitement and worry at the idea of seeing Yuuri again. He digs his fingers into Katerina’s snowy fur, clinging to her to ground himself. She whines softly when he clings too tightly, and licks his fingers when he lets go, forgiving as ever.

The train ride isn’t long, but he nearly misses his stop anyway, lost in the haze of jetlag.

When he stumbles off the train, he’s exhausted and Katerina keeps close to his legs, nervous in a new environment.

And then they make it out of the train station, and there Yuuri is, in a loose white tee shirt and light jeans, looking at his phone.

“Yuuri!” Viktor calls, and Yuuri looks up from his phone instantly, while Viktor and Katerina run towards him.

“We made it,” Viktor says, a little breathless, and the corners of Yuuri’s eyes crinkle in a tiny smile.

“I see that,” Yuuri says. “And you brought Katerina?”

“I couldn’t leave her at home, not for two weeks. And you said you missed having a dog around.”

“I did,” Yuuri says softly, crouching to offer a flat hand for Katerina to sniff.

She does so, delicate as the princess she’s named for, before letting Yuuri rub at her back and ears.

“Hello, beautiful,” Yuuri murmurs, looking entranced.

“No greeting for me?” Viktor asks, pouting a little. Yuuri looks up, and his eyes are dancing.

 _God_ , he’s beautiful.

“Hello to you too,” Yuuri says, standing slowly, like his knees hurt. “You look exhausted.”

“Yuuri!”

Yuuri laughs, just a little, before taking Viktor’s hand.

“Come on,” he says, leading the way to a small dark car. “My parents are excited to meet you, they’ve cleared out a room at the onsen for you.”

Viktor tries not to stop in his tracks at the idea that he staying with Yuuri’s family, that Yuuri’s parents want to meet him. Instead he focuses on getting Katerina into the back seat, then himself into the passenger side. He’ll just have to be on his best behavior.

Yuuri starts the car, and then gives Viktor a look as he pulls away from the train station.

“Tell me about the flight?” he asks, and Viktor sighs, forcing himself to relax back into his seat.

Then he launches into one of his well-rehearsed rants about Aeroflot. Which leads into another story, from several months ago, which leads to another. There’s a tiny uptick to the corner of Yuuri’s mouth that says he enjoys the stories, and a looseness in his hands that Viktor has never seen before, and can only ascribe to being home.

It looks good on him.

Viktor keeps up the stories all the way to the onsen, half to keep seeing Yuuri’s mouth tick up when he finds something particularly funny, half to distract himself from the fact he’s about to meet Yuuri’s family.

And then they’re there.

When they walk through the doors of Yu-topia together, Viktor can see Yuuri’s instant ease. The danseur’s steel of Yuuri’s spine smooths into something a little less stage-ready, his shoulders ease their straightness–but none of the wildness Yuuri carries truly leaves.

Instead, it is simply welcomed, accepted and accommodated. Yuuri’s mother smiles, sweet and constant, but never with teeth, and it’s the same for the rest of the family, and many of the regulars watching football in the inn’s main room.

Viktor is welcomed in, shown to a room, asked if he’s hungry and set down with a promise of food faster than he can really process.

Yuuri just shrugs, fond and eloquent.

“Welcome to Hasetsu,” he says, and Viktor can’t help his smile.

* * *

Viktor sleeps hard that night, and when he crawls out of bed the next morning, he ends up all but begging Yuuri’s sister for coffee. She laughs at him, but also hands him a mug not long after, so Viktor figures she’s not laughing out of malice.

He finds a corner to sit in, Katerina by his feet, and watches the main room, nursing his coffee, watching as Yuuri’s family attends to the daily business of the onsen.

Mari stops by once, looking as unimpressed as ever.

“Mom wanted me to let you know Yuuri won’t be in for hours,” she says, in careful, faintly-accented English. “He hates mornings, and his jetlag is always bad, coming back.”

“It’s okay,” Viktor says, smiling up at her, as bright as he knows how. “I don’t mind waiting.”

She shakes her head at him, but she also refills his coffee when she sees it empty, and leaves him to his own devices until Yuuri finally slouches in, just before noon. He looks tired, but lively, and he smiles when he spots Viktor and Katerina.

“Good morning, gorgeous,” he says to the dog, rubbing gently at her ears, and Viktor pouts at the deliberate slight.

There’s the faintest quirk to the corner of Yuuri’s mouth that says he’s teasing, says that he enjoys Viktor’s pain.

“Mean,” Viktor says, and the quirk twitches a little higher, and Yuuri looks up from under the fringe of his bangs, eyes dancing.

“Good morning to you too,” Yuuri says, finally turning his attention fully from Katerina. “You came early.”

Viktor shrugs, setting his coffee aside. “The season’s over. And I missed you. I didn’t realize you weren’t a morning person.”

“Mornings are for sleeping in, Viktor. Nothing else.”

“ _Nothing_  else?” Viktor asks, trying a flirty grin on Yuuri. “You sure?”

Yuuri tries a reproving look, but there’s a faint hint of pink to his cheeks that says he’s not as unmoved as he’d like Viktor to think.

“Anyway,” he says, and his voice is a little rough. “Is there anything you want to do?”

Viktor just turns up the flirty smile. “What do you recommend?”

Yuuri rolls his eyes, and Viktor lets the flirting fall away with a laugh.

“Truly, though,” he says, “Take me wherever.”

Yuuri bites a little at his lip, and shrugs. “There’s not much, really. I’m guessing you don’t just want to go to the rink.”

Yuuri’s mother bustles by, calling a question to Yuuri, which is answered quickly, with a smile. She pauses by their corner, and gives Viktor a considering look.

“Yuuri says he doesn’t know where to take you,” she says. “But I say, there is the ninja house.”

“Ninja house?” Viktor asks, and his mind is alight with lurid images.

Yuuri just rolls his eyes. “There’s not really anything inside–”

“Can we go?”

“It’s not very interesting–”

“ _Please_?”

Viktor knows he has very good puppy-eyes, and he turns their full effect on Yuuri. The actual trip is mostly immaterial except that it requires Yuuri to come with him, and be within reach the whole time.

Yuuri sighs, the slump of his shoulders and roll of his eyes telegraphing Viktor’s win as loudly as if he’d shouted it.

“I’ll get your cane,” his mother says, smiling as she pats Yuuri consolingly on the back.

* * *

The next two days play out similarly–Viktor wakes before Yuuri does, and they meet in the main room of Yu-topia once Yuuri is up. Viktor then cajols him into a trip to whatever local attraction Mari or Hiroko happen to mention. They walk slower each day, and Yuuri’s soreness takes longer to work out every morning, but Viktor doesn’t mind.

With Yuuri by his side, he’s introduced to the local rink, and to both Axel’s parents and her sisters. While Yuuko and Takeshi Nishigori are perfectly pleasant, Lutz and Loop leave him feeling a little bit like he’s been through a hurricane–before he knows what’s happened he’s signed at least three things, had his photo taken, and one of them is muttering dire things about “skating otaku” to her phone.

Yuuri just laughs at him, and Axel smirks over her sisters’ heads, before being drawn back into their plotting.

He also meets Minako Okukawa, who looks him over, sniffs sharply, and says something to Yuuri that has Yuuri shrugging and smiling as he replies.

She reminds Viktor of Lilia, and he’s not sure if the comparison is comforting or terrifying.

And then, one morning, Yuuri is even later than usual. When he finally stumbles into the inn’s main room, he looks exhausted and frayed at the edges. He doesn’t even protest Mari’s rough hug, instead, just sighing and leaning into his sister for a brief moment.

“I’ll bring you tea,” she says, and Yuuri smiles faintly at her, just a twitch at the corners of his mouth, before taking a seat next to Viktor.

Once seated, Yuuri slouches, one shoulder pressing against Viktor’s. He looks edgy and stressed, and he doesn’t stop playing with his hands until Mari brings him the promised cup of tea. He takes it from her with a grateful smile and wraps his hands around it, but doesn’t drink.

“Are you okay?” Viktor asks, as Yuuri leans against him.

“I’m fine,” Yuuri grumbles, clutching his tea.

“It’s the full moon,” Mari says, and Viktor looks up at her. “Yuuri is going to be cranky and lazy all day.”

Yuuri mutters something rude-sounding to the surface of his tea, and sags more heavily against Viktor’s shoulder.

Viktor tries to control the foolish smile that wants to spread across his face, but he can’t help  the way his heart leaps at the casual contact, the warmth of Yuuri’s body along his side.

“I don’t mind,” he says, and Mari just rolls her eyes at him.

They spend much of the day like that. Yuuri is, as Mari promised, little-kid cranky, though he’s a willing conversation partner.

Periodically, members of Yuuri’s family will bring by plates of food–always things that are easy to eat by hand, always small but carb-heavy. Yuuri goes through them at a frankly alarming rate, and his posture slowly deteriorates against Viktor’s side. His leaning turns into a slouch sometime around mid-afternoon, and a slump not much later, his weight sliding down Viktor’s side until his head is pillowed on one thigh. He seems comfortable, inasmuch as anyone from their line of work is comfortable lying on a floor.

Eventually the conversation turns to travel.

“Debrecen was colder than I’d like,” Viktor mentions, idly toying with a lock of Yuuri’s hair, “but it was pretty.”

Yuuri makes an irritated noise. “Full of idiots.”

“Well, yes,” Viktor admits, “but it was pretty, for all that.”

“And anyway, ‘colder than you’d like’?” Yuuri says. “You’re Russian.”

“That doesn’t mean I  _like_  winter, Yuuri. But where have you been lately that you’ve liked? You took Axel to some competitions outside of the JGP early in the season, didn’t you?”

Yuuri rolls his shoulders and hums, low and meditative.

“All of Europe was a mess, because Euros are terrible,” he says finally, “but Abu Dhabi was at least interesting.”

“You don’t like Europeans?” Viktor asks, a little wounded and Yuuri makes a disgruntled noise, stretching a little bit and taking another bite from his plate of assorted snacks. Viktor doesn’t understand how Yuuri can eat like he does, and still be as skeletal as he was at the GPF, as too-lean as he still is now.

“ _Euros_  and Europeans are different, Viktor,” Yuuri says, leaning closer, his weight heavy on Viktor’s thigh. “No one likes Euros. They’re the entire reason hunters exist.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Euro  _werewolves_ , Viktor. I don’t have a problem with the  _continent_.”

“Oh,” Viktor says, and as clear and present as Yuuri’s affection has been for the past two days, it’s still a relief to find out that he isn’t just an exception to Yuuri’s prejudices. “Are there different kinds?”

“Just the two,” Yuuri says, reaching out to grab another snack. “North American and European. Europeans are what most people think of when they hear ‘werewolf’. They’re aggressive, attack people on sight. A lot of the Euro packs still haven’t figured out carb-loading either, because they’re traditionalist assholes who don’t think that a complete reformation of the skeletal system every twenty-nine days burns any calories.”

“You sound bitter.”

“Just a little?” Yuuri says, and his voice might be light but his smile has teeth. Sharp ones. “Some hunters don’t get enough education to know the difference. And Euros play rougher than I like. I’m North American strain–our instincts are a lot less intense.”

“That’s why they called you an American, isn’t it?” Viktor asks. “In Debrecen, in the alleyway.”

Yuuri nods, his eyes slipping from Viktor’s face to stare across the room.

“How did it happen?”

A shrug. “I don’t really remember–Phichit and I went out drinking, and the next morning I woke up with scar tissue all over my shoulder. Dessa tracked me down not long after, to apologize and explain.”

“Dessa?”

“The wolf who bit me. Someone’d fucked with her prep, and she got out.” Yuuri blows out a breath, then shrugs again. “American wolf instincts–we’re  _shy_. She panicked, and I was the poor drunk in the park. She bit me. Typical story.”

“Is it?” Viktor asks, curious.

Yuuri blinks, and then laughs, a little self-deprecating. “You’re taking this well enough I keep forgetting you don’t have the background. Someone’s prep getting messed up and them biting someone? It’s one of the most common ways new werewolves get made, at least in America.”

“Huh,” Viktor says, and carefully does not let on about the amount of time he spent staring at the ceiling of his apartment, holding Katerina close and trying to deal with the idea of  _werewolves_. “I guess that makes sense.”

Yuuri shrugs a little. “Not something you thought about much?”

“No,” Viktor says, smiling a little down at Yuuri. “Not really.”

“It’s not glamorous, or anything,” Yuuri says. “Just people being people–”

“Yuuri,” Hiroko says from the door, interrupting, and Yuuri stirs from his sprawl. He shifts until he’s sitting more or less upright to look at her. She smiles, just a little, and says something in Japanese, which makes Yuuri sigh, long and deep.

He replies, sounding tired and tense, and she just smiles more at him, saying one thing more before leaving the room.

Yuuri sighs again, and then levers himself to his feet, knees and ankles making a plethora of clicking and popping noises as he moves.

“It’s almost moonrise,” he explains, and then he brushes one hand, just the tips of his fingers, across Viktor’s shoulders. “Wait here for a minute?”

Viktor nods, and Yuuri walks away, visibly stiff.

Viktor doesn’t even move until Yuuri returns, wrapped in a faded blanket that was probably once a deep blue or violet. Dusk has long since fallen outside, and with the blanket wrapped around him, Yuuri looks like a lost shadow.

“Come on,” Yuuri says, leading the way out onto the veranda, where the night air is heavy and humid. Viktor likes it–the days he can do without, the heat oppressive and the humidity worse–but the nights are slow and easy. There’s a languidness to the air that never comes in Russia.

Yuuri sits at the edge of the veranda, taking a moment to arrange himself and his blanket to his satisfaction, before he looks up at Viktor.

“Sit with me?” he asks, and how could Viktor ever say no?

“Of course.”

Folding himself back down to a sitting position sets off its own flurry of cracks and pops from his joints, and Yuuri huffs a laugh at him for it, eyes crinkling at the corners in a smile.

“You’re getting old,” Yuuri says, and Viktor mimes being stabbed in the heart with a smile of his own.

The silence that settles between them is comfortable, for several long moments, before Yuuri’s smile fades from his face, and he turns to look at Viktor with a serious expression.

“I–you should know, before the shift starts. The wolf isn’t the same.” Yuuri bites his lip. “I’m still  _me_ , but. It’s like I’m drunk, a little. I have less control. I don’t remember things very clearly after. And. Don’t. Um.” Yuuri fiddles with the edge of his blanket, and Viktor straightens to look Yuuri in the face.

“Please don’t touch me until the shift is over,” Yuuri says not quite avoiding Viktor’s eyes, but not meeting them either. “The wolf…doesn’t react well to strangers.”

“Okay,” Viktor says, and smiles as sweetly as he knows how. “I can be patient.”

Yuuri gives him an unfairly dubious look, and Viktor affects a wounded expression for a moment, until Yuuri laughs softly. He turns away, shifting to make himself more comfortable, and the blanket slides off of one shoulder.

One  _bare_  shoulder, which is what finally clues Viktor in to the fact that Yuuri is probably  _naked_  under the blanket. Which would probably set off a whole new line of thought, except that in the faint spilled light from inside, Viktor can see the ragged scars stitched across the skin, silver in some places and still livid pink in others.

He wants to trace their paths, but he doesn’t dare. Yuuri said  _don’t touch me_ , and Viktor will listen. Maybe the shift isn’t yet begun, but it also isn’t over.

“Ugly, right?” Yuuri says, catching Viktor’s gaze. There’s a self-deprecating twist to the corner of his mouth, a darkness in his eyes.

“No,” Viktor says, because the silver shines in the starlight, because the pink catches the warm light spilling from indoors, because the scars look like survival, writ brave on Yuuri’s narrow shoulder. Viktor’s fingers curl involuntarily in his lap. “It’s not ugly,” he says.

Viktor wants to run his fingers over old punctures and tears, wants to touch the scarring that has seamed wildness to Yuuri’s flesh. He wants to follow his fingers with his lips, to be gentle where another mouth was not.

Yuuri just huffs a sigh, like he doesn’t believe Viktor and that’s. Well. It’s fine. Viktor will just have to convince him.

“How long until moonrise?” Yuuri asks, and Viktor checks the time on his phone.

“Just a few more minutes,” he says.

“I hate waiting,” Yuuri says, toying with a loose thread on the blanket with his free hand. “I wish it would just be  _over_.”

Viktor turns his phone over on the veranda, so that he can’t watch time tick by.

“Is it moonrise that triggers it?” he asks, hoping the question will distract Yuuri from his anxiety. “Or seeing the moon?”

“Depends,” Yuuri says, wrinkling his nose. “Most of the time it’s just moonrise. If I’m travelling...” he shrugs “Too much jetlag and I’ll transform just by being in moonlight.” He considers for a moment, and then says. “That was a bad trip.”

Viktor can only imagine, and even that, he’s sure, can’t quite capture the horror.

Yuuri breathes, slow and steady, and Viktor can’t stop watching him. His eyes keep returning to the pale-and-dark mottling of scar tissue on Yuuri’s shoulder.

They wait, and the silence stretches, full of quiet, patient tension.

Then moon crests above the horizon, and Viktor might not be able to see it, but he knows, because Yuuri  _whimpers_ , a tiny, animal sound of pain that cuts Viktor to the heart. His fingers tighten into fists, and he can feel his nails cutting into his palms.  _Don’t touch me_ , Yuuri said, and Viktor won’t, but he wants to.

The muscle of Yuuri’s back warps, and his whole body begins to contort grotesquely. Viktor can  _hear_  it, as bones snap and twist and reform. Yuuri’s entire body shudders, and Viktor suddenly understands why he was lying down, as his legs rapidly realign, knees shifting direction, hands and feet abruptly shrinking down, fingers melding into paws. As graceful as Yuuri is, there’s no way he could have supported himself upright.

As his body reshapes itself, Yuuri’s skin shivers, and thick fur begins to sprout. His skull warps, a muzzle pushing out of the center of his face, his eyes moving sickeningly as the bone around them changes forms.

The whole process takes perhaps two minutes, and Viktor never stops wanting to vomit.

When it’s finished, and Yuuri’s skin has stopped twitching, Viktor is sharing the veranda with a massive wolf, who is currently wrapped in a blanket.

“You okay?” he asks quietly, and the wolf whines, struggling out of the blanket and jumping heavily to the ground. Standing, Yuuri’s head is nearly even with Viktor’s, and Yuuri’s eyes, which are normally a striking amber, are instead an eerie gold.

Yuuri paces a few steps, slow and careful, like he’s not sure his legs will hold him, or how much they’ll hurt. For all that Yuuri is utterly, terribly undomesticated in this moment, he reminds Viktor of nothing so much as Makkachin, in her last, most arthritic years.

“Oh,” Viktor says softly, because Yuuri is beautiful–deep grey with a white underbelly, and he looks like a spirit, here at the edge of the woods with the moonlight beginning to filter down. Something so beautiful should never be in so much pain.

The wolf startles at the sound of his voice, caution giving way to fluid motion as Yuuri whirls, lips peeling back from white teeth. It’s a familiar expression, but it fits better on a wolf’s face than a human one. He winces when he comes to rest, as though he's moved past his own limits, pushed strained joints and muscles, and his snarl deepens, defensive.

“Easy,” Viktor soothes, holding out one hand, like he might for a strange dog, and the wolf takes several quick steps back, looking wary and pained. Viktor keeps his breathing steady, and holds still, like when he was first coaxing Katerina to him.

It takes several long moments for Yuuri to relax, for him to cover his teeth and most of the wild light to go out of his eyes.

Finally, there’s a soft huff and Yuuri moves again, taking several cautious steps closer to sniff delicately at Viktor’s hand.

Satisfied, the wolf takes another step closer, sliding past Viktor’s outstretched hand and pressing his massive head gently into Viktor’s chest. Viktor sighs in response, closing his eyes and burying his face in the fur between Yuuri’s ears.

“ _Yuuri_ ,” he says, and the only response is a huff of air and Yuuri pressing his skull deeper into Viktor’s chest. Viktor’s fingers dig into the thick, coarse fur of Yuuri’s ruff, grounding himself.

This is really happening. He just watched Yuuri’s skeleton break, warp, reform. There’s a full moon in the sky and a massive wolf pressed against his chest.

 _Werewolves_ , God. And Viktor thought the hardest part about falling in love with Yuuri was going to be the distance between St. Petersburg and Hasetsu.

After a long moment, Yuuri draws back from Viktor’s arms. Viktor lets him go with a sense of loss, already mourning the weight of Yuuri’s trust. But Yuuri doesn’t go far, just to the edge of the woods. Viktor wouldn’t begrudge him if he left, but after a moment Yuuri just sighs, and paces back to the veranda. He's still stiff, but it seems to be working out more easily than it did when Yuuri was in human form.

They sit together for a long time, Yuuri sometimes pacing, sometimes just pausing for a moment, and sometimes deigning to lean against Viktor, accepting gentle fingers through his ruff, across the breadth of his back.

He doesn’t like Viktor’s fingers too near his face, or his throat, but that’s understandable, and it’s early yet. Viktor will take what he can get.

They stay outside for long enough that Viktor loses track of time, but Yuuri finally settles, lying in the grass, not quite within Viktor’s reach, but not too away either.

It’s peaceful. The cicadas and crickets are both out in force, Yuuri is lovely and at least mostly at ease, and Viktor has no responsibilities for the next several days. He yawns, and Yuuri raises his head, looking concerned.

“I’m fine,” Viktor says, and Yuuri tilts his head, expression turning from concerned to unimpressed. He stands, a little cautious, but seemingly without pain, and whines softly,  approaching to nudge at Viktor’s shoulder with his nose.

“Really,” Viktor says, yawning again. “I’m fine, Yuuri. Just a little tired.”

Yuuri whines and nudges Viktor’s shoulder again, and the incongruity of the action makes Viktor smile. A wolf, worrying about him.

“Don’t worry, Yuuri,” he says. “I’ve stayed up later before.”

That gains him a disapproving look, and Viktor sighs.

“Fine,” he finally accedes. “Fine, I’ll go to bed.”

Yuuri looks dubious, and he leaps onto the veranda by Viktor, before making his way over to the door, as if to lead Viktor inside.

Standing is an effort after nearly an hour of stillness, but Viktor manages, and he grabs the twilight-blue blanket Yuuri abandoned just after the moon rose.

Walking back inside the inn, where the lights have been dimmed or extinguished for the night, feels strange. Yuuri is a patient monolith by his side, occasionally nudging his side, as if to make sure he doesn’t dally.

Yuuri also has to guide Viktor down the right hallway once or twice, when he would have walked in the wrong direction. Viktor is not blessed with an excellent sense of direction.

Finally, Yuuri comes to a stop outside one of the doors, huffing softly at Viktor to get his attention.

“Is this mine?” Viktor asks, sliding the door carefully open. “It is–thank you, Yuuri.”

Yuuri just makes another soft noise, before nudging at Viktor’s hip, encouraging him inside.

Viktor turns around once he’s through the door, looking at the strange image of a wolf sitting calmly in the hallway of a traditional Japanese inn.

“What,” he says, unable to resist teasing, “no good night kiss?”

And then he’s seeing stars as his head cracks against the floor, his chest sore from a sudden weight on it, and a warm tongue swipes sloppily across his lips and cheek, almost to his ear.

Blinking his eyes open reveals that yes, it  _is_  Yuuri on top of him, having toppled Viktor over with commendable ease. His tongue is lolling, and there’s pure mischief in his eyes.

“You win,” Viktor says, laughing. “I shouldn’t start things I can’t finish anyway.”

Yuuri tilts his head as if to say  _no you shouldn’t_ , and graciously shifts his weight off of Viktor’s chest.

Viktor is busily thinking up plans for how to get Yuuri back, when a growl cuts through the quiet of the room, and his head snaps around to find the source.

Katerina is crouched in the corner of the room furthest from the door, her lips peeled back from her teeth. Her eyes are fixed on Yuuri, and every inch of her tense with fear.

She hasn’t reacted to Viktor like this before, hasn't seemed truly frightened in years–but then again, Viktor has never before brought her into contact a wolf at least four times her mass before.

“Oh, Katen’ka,” Viktor breathes. “Pretty girl, I’m so sorry. This must be so confusing for you.”

Yuuri sighs gently, and lies down by the doorway. He doesn’t attempt to move any closer to Katerina, instead just resting his head on his paws. His expression is patient, and Viktor sits down by his side, offering an open hand to Katerina. She’s shy, but he’s confident she’ll warm up to Yuuri in time. He just has to coax her close enough to realize that, in spite of the very different shape, Yuuri is still Yuuri.

* * *

Mari finds them in the morning, sprawled out on the floor of Viktor’s room, Viktor half-buried under Yuuri’s grey-brown bulk.

Katerina is watching both of them from the bed, with the air of a dog who is not quite sure what to make of her owner’s latest folly. Yuuri just opens one eye at the sound of the door, sighs softly at Mari, and closes his eye again, shifting infinitesimally closer to Viktor as he does so.

It makes Mari smile to see her brother, safe at home like he so rarely is during the full moon.

Neither of them are going to be up for at least an hour though, so she clicks her tongue at Katerina, tapping her thigh. The poodle looks up from warily regarding Viktor and Yuuri, and then carefully skirts her way around the wolf in the room to nudge at Mari’s knee.

“He’s an idiot,” Mari tells her, before heading towards the kitchen, poodle at her side. “But Yuuri’s not going to hurt either of you. Calm down.”

* * *

She’s proven right only a few hours later, when Yuuri and Viktor finally stir.

Yuuri seems to be in better condition than usual, gliding into the downstairs with liquid grace. Viktor stumbles down the stairs behind him, looking so rough it seems more like he’s the one who rearranged his whole skeleton.

Then again, Mari thinks, that’s what Viktor gets for sleeping on the floor with a three hundred pound wolf for a blanket. Yuuri’s the one with supernatural healing, and he bitches enough when he passes out on the floor in human shape. Viktor–older, without Yuuri’s benefits, and with a longer career behind him–can’t find it any more comfortable.

Yuuri picks his way around the room with his accustomed care, and Mari watches, smiling faintly. It’s still a little surreal, even after eight years, to watch her little brother, the three-hundred pound wolf, make his way through the house, partially because of the rarity.

Yuuri pauses only to bump his cheek against hers, and to absently lick at Katerina’s brow before he makes his way out.

“I told you,” Mari says to the poodle, who is stock still and looks more than a bit startled. Turning her attention to her brother’s boyfriend, Mari says, “He’ll be back later. He’s hunting breakfast.”

“Hunting…?” Viktor asks, and she snorts at the dazed sound of his voice.

“What, you think we could feed him?” she says, ducking back into the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee. Viktor’s clearly useless without caffeination. “Yuuri hunts through the moon. Takes the edge off his anxiety and keeps him fed.”

* * *

Yuuri returns hours later, looking deeply satisfied. His fur is damp, as though he’s just bathed, and there’s no sign that he was ever stiff at all when he leaps up into the house.

“Have a good time?” Mari asks wryly, and Yuuri just flicks his tail at her, insolence in every elegant line of him as he passes her by.

Viktor looks up at the sound of a soft footfall, and he can’t help his smile at the sight of Yuuri, who stretches in a slow, showy motion as soon as he’s sure he’s being watched. And then he promptly lies down, ignoring Katerina’s nervousness to tuck himself close and press his head into Viktor’s lap.

Even Viktor can read signals that obvious, and, murmuring soothingly to Katerina, he buries his fingers in the thick fur over Yuuri’s neck, rubbing deep circles with the pads of his fingers, until Yuuri relaxes, eyes falling half-closed, head resting heavy on Viktor’s thigh. As Yuuri relaxes, Katerina does too, until she’s lying along Viktor’s calf, on the opposite side from Yuuri.

“You don’t waste time, do you?” Viktor says softly, and Yuuri just blinks innocently and goes boneless under the attention, tail brushing slowly back and forth across the floor.

They stay there for a long time. Viktor’s leg falls asleep long before they get up, blood flow cut off by the weight of Yuuri’s head. He finds it hard to mind, with Katerina finally calm enough to doze on his knee, Yuuri lazy and content by his side. It’s been a long time since he’s been able to just sit, read a book on his phone, and rest.

* * *

The next day, Yuuri chivvies Viktor to the skating rink, just in time for the Nishigori triplets to tumble in for practice. Axel’s hair is tied into a sleek ponytail, and Lutz’s into a tight ballerina’s bun, but Loop’s hair is a loose mess.

“Sorry, Yuuri,” she says, raking one hand through it to try and get the dark strands under control. “I was working on homework and lost track of time.”

Yuuri sighs in a way that suggests this is a common problem, and throws Viktor a speaking look.

“I can help,” Viktor says. “Come here?”

Loop shares a dubious look with her sisters, but drops her bag and walks over.

“I can do a crown braid that holds without a hair tie,” Viktor explains, shifting himself up a level on the benches and gesturing for her to take a seat in front of him. “Might not be perfect, but it’s better than having hair in your face. Yura once gave himself a bloody nose trying to skate with his hair down.”

Loop laughs, sitting down. “Really?  _Yuri Plisetsky_  did that?”

“He did,” Viktor confirms, combing his fingers through her hair and starting to section it. “Wiped out landing a jump combination in practice. Yakov yelled so loud…”

He keeps telling the story as he braids. The action is familiar, though he has to adjust to the different rhythm of not doing his own hair. His hands have lost deftness over the years, but some things are ingrained. It doesn’t take long before he’s tucking the end of the braid through the halfway point, making sure that every twist is tight enough that it will hold through an hour or more of concerted practice.

“You’re good,” Viktor tells Loop, tapping her on the shoulder, and she leaps to her feet, shaking her head. The crown braid stays put, and Viktor grins a little. It’s been a long time since he’s done fancy braiding, and he never had many friends to practice on. The angle is a little different from doing it himself, and his lack of practice shows in the braid’s flyaways.

“How’d I do?” he asks, and Yuuri gives him an amused look, head shifting on Viktor’s thigh.

“It held up to practice,” Viktor says. “It just didn’t fit any of my programs.”

The look turns dubious, and Yuuri chuffs at him, before he levers himself to his feet and leaps up a level on Ice Castles’ bleachers. It should look out of place–a massive wolf perching himself on the seats of a rink, so he has a view of the ice.

Instead, it looks almost perfectly normal. Part of that is probably just the utter self assurance with which Yuuri moves, but some of it is in the way that Axel, Lutz and Loop watch him as they skate, moving through compulsory figures for a solid half an hour before going through with the training plans Yuuri assigned them before the full moon.

The girls skate, and Viktor watches carefully. Axel is the sharpest of them–clean edges and elegant spins and the soaring triple axel she’s already known for. Her sisters aren’t honed to the same keen competition-ready edge, but they’re not far behind either. Viktor has no doubt that if either Lutz or Loop wanted to go into competition, they wouldn’t have any trouble making life on the Junior circuit a nightmare.

Yuuri watches them in silence, a focused sentinel. He only stirs once, when Lutz heads into a jump subtly wrong, and he lets out a single sharp bark that snaps all three girls still, looking up at him.

After that, practice winds down quickly, and as soon as the triplets are off the ice, Yuuri seems to lose interest, leaping down from his perch to press close to Viktor’s side, clearly mugging for attention.

“And Yakov called my attention span short,” Viktor murmurs, working his fingers deep into Yuuri’s ruff. “What would he say about you?”

Yuuri just leans into the touch of Viktor’s hands with a shameless little sigh, and Viktor can’t help laughing, pressing his cheek to Yuuri’s for a moment.

Viktor might not have anticipated several days spent with a clingy, overly-affectionate, four-legged Yuuri, but he can’t imagine anything better.

Everything is perfect.

* * *

When Viktor wakes up the next morning, he’s chilly. Katerina is a mass of heat along his legs, but his blanket is low on his hips, and there’s a faint breeze across his shoulders that makes goosebumps break out. Which is weird, because he  _knows_  he wasn’t cold when he went to sleep. He was almost too warm even–gloriously, stiflingly warm.

He cracks his eyes open, and it’s not long before he realizes why he’s cold–Yuuri is no longer a furred monolith by his side.

Instead Yuuri is back into human shape, chin resting on one drawn-up knee as he contemplates the wall with an empty expression. He’s clearly been up for a while–he’s dressed in clothes that look worn-soft by age, and there’s a mug that might have held tea clasped loosely in his hands.

He looks ragged, thinner than he was before the full moon. Purple smudges underline his eyes, and he looks like he should still be sleeping.

(should still be sleeping, warm and curled close, part of Viktor pouts, and he hushes it.)

“Good morning,” Viktor says, after a moment, rolling onto his back to look at Yuuri more easily.

Yuuri startles slightly, a shiver running through his whole body, before he flicks a look at Viktor. His eyes are brown-amber again, no longer wolf-gold or eyeshine-yellow, and Viktor is startled at how much it calms him to see it.

“Morning,” Yuuri says softly, turning to look back at the wall. He’s so  _still_ , again. Like he didn’t spend days pressed against Viktor every second he wasn’t in the woods. Like he might not approve of what his wolf-self did.

“You look better than you did at the Grand Prix,” Viktor ventures, inanely, and Yuuri shrugs a little, before leaning to place his mug on the floor

“It’s always easier at home,” he says, turning to face Viktor more fully. “This is my territory, so I’m less stressed, and it’s not like travel is easy. Most werewolves understand that sometimes a stranger just has to pass through, but it’s not like any of us  _enjoy_  it.”

“You get visitors?” Viktor asks. Hasetsu doesn’t seem like much of a tourist destination–a slow, sleepy town on the ocean.

Yuuri curls his lip, a low growl working out of his throat. “Unfortunately,” he says flatly. “There’s a pack not too far south that gets a lot of visitors, and everyone seems to need to come through here.”

“You don’t like outsiders,” Viktor says, and he was invited, Yuuri’s parents have been unfailingly kind, but.

He worries sometimes, even so.

“Not particularly,” Yuuri says, stretching slightly and taking Viktor’s hand with an idle motion, toying with Viktor’s fingers. “They…make things harder than they have to be.”

Viktor can’t help the way he still’s at Yuuri’s words, breath freezing in his chest.

Yuuri blinks, and then his fingers tighten, almost bruising, and he leans close.

“Viktor, no,” he says, quick and earnest. “You, I asked you here. I  _like_  having you here.”

“Oh,” is about all Viktor can manage, with a beautiful man leaning so close to him, amber eyes concerned, loose shirt hanging off one shoulder and revealing the sharp jut of a collarbone. He blinks, finds a few more words. “I’m glad.”

“The ones I don’t like–they come in like they have something to prove, or  _I_  have something to prove, and it’s  _annoying_ ,” Yuuri says, rolling his eyes, lips peeling back slightly from his teeth.

He’s gorgeous, sharp-edged and sweet, and his fingers are warm against Viktor’s cold hand. He’s lovely, and he  _stayed_. Viktor is lucky in many ways, but despite his reputation, his romantic life has never been particularly charmed. Now though–

Viktor sighs happily, reaching up with his free hand to pull slightly on the collar of Yuuri’s shirt.

Yuuri follows the tug easily, a smile just starting to crinkle the corners of his eyes when Viktor kisses him, long and slow.

Eventually, Yuuri draws back, just slightly. And then he raises Viktor’s hand to his lips, and kisses the back of it, making Viktor’s breath catch in his throat at the deliberate gentleness.

He can see Yuuri’s heart shining in his eyes, and oh, Viktor is so,  _so_  foolishly in love with him. 


	7. joy

Viktor stares at the wall by his bed, and pets Katerina, and wishes he felt tired. His bed, small as it is compared to the one in his apartment, feels too big without Yuuri crowded next to him. Viktor’s piled on two more blankets, and he still can’t feel quite warm enough.

“He was beautiful,” Viktor murmurs, stroking one hand down Katerina’s back. “I know he scared you, at first, but. He was gorgeous.”

Katerina sighs, nudging his cheek with her nose.

“I like him, Katen’ka,” Viktor whispers. “I really,  _really_  do.”

She whines softly, like she hurts. She’s always been too sensitive to his moods, always been nervous when he’s angry, sad when he’s sad. He hates how much it upsets her, but that doesn’t stop it from being nice to have  _someone_  to commiserate with sometimes.

Viktor lies there, stroking along Katerina’s back and staring at the wall, for he doesn’t even know how long.

And then there’s a rustling by his door, and a soft knock, like someone doesn’t want to wake him.

Unfortunately for them, he hasn’t been sleeping.

When he opens the door, it’s not really a surprise to find Yuuri there, with the faded purple smudges under his eyes and the drawn thinness of his face. He’s wearing loose fitting clothes, different from the ones he was wearing in the morning, but clearly worn just as soft.

“Do you mind if I–” Yuuri says, gesturing into the room. “I can’t sleep.”

“No,” Viktor says mouth dry. “Not at all.”

Yuuri steps in, closing the door quietly behind himself.

“My brain gets crosswired with the instincts, so I usually stay in the woods, or my apartment,” he explains, quickly, like he’s worried about what Viktor thinks. “It stops me getting weird about where I sleep, bothering people right after, when I can’t sleep at home.”

“You’re not bothering me,” Viktor says, the words flying out of his mouth without input from his brain, and he can feel himself flush.

Yuuri pauses, and then sighs softly.

“I’m glad,” he says. “I’ll go back to my apartment tomorrow night–I’m just.” He makes a tiny, helpless gesture with one hand.

“It’s fine,” Viktor says softly. “Let’s just go to bed, okay?”

Yuuri pauses for a moment, and then all of the tension goes out of him suddenly, and he slumps.

“Okay,” he says. And then, “Thank you.”

Viktor pulls back the blankets back and climbs into the bed, keeping carefully to one side. Yuuri takes the other side, moving slow and tentative, until he’s curled under the blankets too. There’s a careful foot of space between them, and Viktor wants to reach out, but he doesn’t want to push.

It’s enough to have Yuuri here.

Viktor falls asleep quickly, in a bed that is no longer too-empty, finally warm.

* * *

Viktor’s alarm shrills, cutting into warm dreams, and Viktor groans, cracking his eyes open and flailing out with one hand to find his phone.

“Too early,” a rough voice says from by Viktor’s ear. “No.”

Viktor blinks, trying to place exactly why his left arm is asleep from the elbow down, and who just spoke.

His alarm keeps playing.

“Turn it  _off_ ,” the same voice rasps, and it all clicks.

Viktor turns off his alarm, a little awkward with only one hand, and tries to contain the delicate bubbles of joy that he feels at the weight of Yuuri on his arm, the warmth of Yuuri’s breath against his neck.

Even if it’s just because Yuuri’s mind is still a little messed up from the moon, Viktor will take it. Even if it never happens again, he’ll cherish every second of this he’s allotted, Yuuri’s warmth against his side and in his bed.

“Sleep,” Yuuri says, trying in vain to bury his face deeper into Viktor’s neck and shoulder. “S’early.”

“Of course,  _krasavets_ ,” Viktor murmurs, pressing his cheek against Yuuri’s hair. “Of course.”

He makes sure his alarms are all off, and sets his phone aside.

Minutes later, he’s asleep again.

* * *

When they finally do get up, it’s nearly noon, and it’s only because Yuuri has a lesson to teach at Ice Castle.

Viktor watches him teach, and it’s different from watching him with the Nishigori triplets. Yuuri teases the girls as much as teaches–a combination of favored uncle and strict coach. With little Aki, he’s entirely gentle, coaxing her into confidence.

Viktor isn’t good at that part of coaching–it’s why he doesn’t take on Junior skaters. All of his students, Masha included, are overconfident dramatics. He wouldn’t know what to do with a student as kitten-shy as Yuuri’s current one. But he watches, fascinated by Yuri’s infinite patience and gentle self-deprecation.

“I am an old man,” Yuuri says at one point, smiling at a frustrated Aki. “My knees hurt! But if I can do this once more, so can you.”

And Aki giggles and tries again.

* * *

Once the lesson is over, Yuuri shooes Aki off of the ice, telling her how well she’s done, and advising her to warm up and stretch out. Her mother smiles, and thanks Yuuri, before ushering her daughter out the door.

“Your last student for the day?” Viktor asks, and Yuuri skates a couple twizzles before replying.

“Yep. I don’t have too many. Axel’s competition schedule makes it hard to teach during the season, and, well. I wasn’t in any shape to teach the last few days.”

“You’re good with her.” Viktor says. “I would never know how to train someone that young.”

“Just takes patience,” Yuuri states. “She’s still learning, and she’s not sure she wants to compete. So we go slow, and she picks what we do.”

There’s a thud and a bang, and Yuuri looks up towards the front door. Viktor follows his gaze up, to see Yuuko leaning in the doorway.

“It’s closing time,” she calls. “Do you want to stick around and play, or are you done?”

Yuuri looks at Viktor, tilting his head slightly in question.

Viktor grins. “You promised to show me Infernal Dance, didn’t you?”

“I guess I did,” Yuuri says, smiling back, before he looks across the rink at Yuuko. “We’re sticking around,” he calls back to her, and she nods.

“Get ready,” Yuuri says softly. “You only have a few seconds before the triplets come in here.”

Viktor laughs, leaning over the boards and pressing his cheek to Yuuri’s. “I’ll manage.”

He can feel Yuuri’s cheek move as he smiles, pressing a little closer for a moment, before drawing back at the sound of a door slamming open.

Viktor blinks and looks over, to see Axel, Lutz and Loop tumbling through the doors from the front desk.

“Front doors are locked, Yuuri!” Lutz calls across the ice. “Show off!”

“Pushy, pushy,” Yuuri teases her, but he starts skating anyway, warming up through easy laps and turns, elegant changes of edge. He shoots Viktor a glance before moving into a showy hydroblading turn, low to the ice. Viktor can’t help the way he grins and claps his hands, delighted.

There’s a beautiful man who loves to skate as much as he does, showing off for  _him_. It’s like a dream.

Yuuri straightens, comes to a stop

“Anything you want to see?” he asks, and his cheeks are pink from the chill, eyes bright.

“You promised me a program,” Viktor says, resting his chin on one hand, elbow on the boards. “Didn’t you?”

“I did,” Yuuri says, and he’s smirking, knowing. He stretches slowly, paying careful attention to his scarred shoulder. “Okay. Loop, cue up Stravinsky’s Infernal Dance?”

“You’re doing Infernal Dance?” Axel asks, rushing to the boards. “You never do Infernal Dance!”

“Guess you don’t know how to ask,” Yuuri says, teasing, before he settles at center ice, body held at the ready. “I’m downgrading some of the jumps–my knees still hurt.”

Viktor pouts, but leans eagerly against the boards anyway, as Yuuri takes his starting position at the center of the rink. One sharp nod to Loop, and then the music starts, and Yuuri moves.

It’s different, now. Of course it is. Yuuri stumbles more, today, wobbles and downgrades his jumps to save his joints. Still, he skates with a kind of assurance that was missing when he was twenty-two, and the rage at the heart of the program has gentled. Eight years is a long time to keep fury blazing bright, after all. 

It isn’t gone, of course it’s not. But the wildfire edge to it, the viciousness that made Viktor’s hair stand on end with hundreds of miles and a tv screen between them, has faded, gone cool and utterly precise. Which doesn’t make it feel any less dangerous to watch.

Every jump is lethally clean, every motion sharp and fierce. The way Yuuri moves, Viktor has no choice but to watch him, and feel his heart leap into his throat. The savage, relentless grace of it, ballet on blades, honed to a razor’s edge.

Yuuri finishes the program with an achingly gorgeous delayed axel, before finally coming to a halt. Chin imperially raised, shoulders back, hands poised, teeth bared in a feral smile.

It makes the hair on the back of Viktor’s neck stand on end, and his heart is thundering. It’s beautiful.

Yuuri holds his position for a moment, and then relaxes, shoulders lowering, tension going out of his spine.

“I forgot how hard that program is,” he says, stretching his arms out in front of him. “I’m going to have to ice my knees tonight.”

Viktor smiles. “I couldn’t do it at all, so well done, Yuuri.”

Yuuri ducks his head slightly, and Viktor’s almost sure that he’s blushing, which is just too charming for words.

“Do you want to skate too?” he asks, evading Viktor’s flirting. “We have the rink until we get tired, so if you want to play around…”

Viktor bites his lip. He hasn’t really missed being on ice, while he’s been here, but what Yuuri’s offering isn’t something he’s done in a while. Skating purely for fun, fooling around on the ice, seeing what he can still do. The closest he’s come recently was skating with Yuuri, that night during Worlds, which wasn’t nearly as private.

Still, he doesn’t miss icing his knees after skating hard, and he especially doesn’t miss the bruises from falling.

“Come  _on_ ,” Yuuri says, a teasing tilt to his head. “I won’t let you get hurt.”

Viktor hesitates for a moment longer, before the lure of Yuuri’s challenge and the ice are too much to resist.

“Let me put on my skates,” he says.

* * *

Stepping onto the ice, without any expectations or responsibilities for once, feels odd. Not bad, just–strange. Light.

He warms up, watching as Yuuri skates thoughtless figure eights and talks to the triplets, who are conferring in a way that he already knows to be wary of.

“Triple-triple!” Lutz calls finally calls, with Loop nodding enthusiastically beside her.

“You know I’m not Sara Crispino, right?” Yuuri asks, head cocked.

“You saying you can’t do it?” Loop asks, challenging.

Viktor can  _see_  that childish barb strike home, and Yuuri makes a face at the girls before he skates off, landing Sara Crispino’s signature triple lutz-triple loop with an almost petulant toss of his head.

“When  _you_  can land it,” he says, “then you can ask that question again.”

Viktor laughs, and, when Yuuri’s eyes snap to him, he performs the same combination, light and easy.

“Can I ask?” he says, flashing Yuuri a flirty look.

Yuuri just clicks his tongue, and says. “You? You don’t get to ask that question at  _all_ , since I  _know_  you can’t do  _this_.”

He casually snaps off a quad loop into a triple axel, textbook clean, and his expression is all challenge as he meets Viktor’s eyes.

Viktor just shakes his head. “Cheating! You know my axel isn’t great!”

Yuuri pulls a face, and Viktor sets his jaw, ready to challenge him back.

“Fine then.”

His quads are more than a bit rusty, but Viktor’s always liked spins and Yuuri hasn’t been showing any off. It takes a moment for him to center himself, but once he’s ready, it’s easy enough to start.

Catching his skate is harder, but Viktor has to be showy  _somehow_ , and even if he’s not as flexible as he once was, this is still doable.

He stretches, and then pushes it a little more, until he’s got the skate above his head. He holds it, like Lilia always taught him to, for just a breath past painful, and then lowers his leg and halts the spin.

It might not be the most beautiful Biellmann he’s ever done, but it  _was_  a Biellmann.

Yuuri has come to a stop, watching him, and his expression has turned rueful.

“One of the few things I can’t do anymore,” he says, when Viktor tilts his head in question. “The scar tissue from Dessa’s bite–it’s hypertrophic, had to be to heal that fast. I just can’t get enough stretch in it to raise my arm like that. Pretty much anything above a horizontal just isn’t possible on that arm anymore.”

Viktor blinks, and then snickers to himself, a little mean.

“What?” Yuuri asks.

“Yuri’s been pushing his jumps into Tanos for the points, and still can’t close the gap,” Viktor explains. “And you made your record without being able to  _do_  them.”

Yuuri laughs. “He might manage it someday, but I don’t think the Tanos are going to be what does it.”

Viktor shrugs, because he’s not so certain, and then clears out of the way as Yuuri skates a quick portion of Axel’s  _To Neverland_  short–the quick, airy step sequence into soaring triple axel.  Axel cheers him on, then tells him to start  _showing off_ , not just playing. He rolls his eyes at her, and then skates into an easy quad loop, landing it with a deadpan expression that makes her cackle.

Viktor keeps thinking it, but it’s true–Yuuri looks easier here, in Hasetsu. It’s not just the lack of pain, or the quiet comfort in territoriality he admitted to, sitting in Viktor’s bed after the full moon. It’s deeper than that. He’s more casually expressive, more teasing. Less carefully controlled.

Yuuri has always seemed like a hurricane lamp, to Viktor–somehow at once glass-fragile and fire-fierce. But here, in the rink at Ice Castle, with the doors locked and the Nishigori triplets egging him on, he’s more than just a lamp. He’s a whole lighthouse, lit up from the inside, warning every passerby of his own danger, guiding every lost ship home.

Viktor has been lost for a very long time.

Yuuri all but glows as he skates, an artist’s joy in showing off bleeding through his skin. Finally warmed up, and with the locked doors assuring him that no one will walk in and see him skating impossibly well, he’s stopped worrying about human limits. Quad toe into triple axel, quad lutz into quad loop. Hideously complex combination spin after combination spin, as though Yuuri is trying to fit as many features as possible into each one.

“ _Amazing_ ,” Viktor says, as Yuuri takes a break from showing off to skate lazy, perfect figures. “How did you–?”

“I had a lot of time,” Yuuri says, shrugging. “I was angry, and then I was depressed, and then I was tired of being depressed. Skating the hardest things I could find or imagine helped.”

Axel leans over the boards to whisper, loudly and conspiratorially, “The year he came home, he learned every program you did. Even the silly [Untouched](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DykW4rtW2eu0&t=NjFkMjJkMzdmNWE4Zjk2YzljM2U3ZTc4YjU5NTI1OTgzN2ZkMzY0YixxTHdsV2pHSA%3D%3D&b=t%3Ai-oBxerbUTaLG4Bmx_hbGA&p=http%3A%2F%2Fboycottromance.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F170459831129%2Fa-light-in-hollow-spaces-77&m=1) one.”

“ _Axel_!” Yuuri cries, and Viktor can’t help the laughter bubbling up in his throat, the way it bows his shoulders and brings tears to his eyes.

“Can I see it?” he finally manages to ask, wiping his eyes with one hand.

Yuuri rolls his eyes, but the look on his face is fond.

“Maybe another time,” he says. “It’s been a while–I’d have to brush up. I might not be very good at it.”

“I’d love to see you do it anyway,” Viktor says. The very idea of it, Yuuri skating a throwaway routine that Viktor choreographed to piss off the FFKKR with the same care as he skated  _Stammi Vicino_ , makes something soft in Viktor’s heart ache sweetly.

Yuuri hums for a moment, skates an easy approximation of a part of the  _Untouched_ program’s step sequence. It’s sloppy, skips over a few elements and transposes a few more, but the essential, nose-thumbing, cheery character of the program still shines through.

“I liked that program,” Yuuri says, sounding thoughtful. “It was the first time in a while you really looked like you were having fun.”

Viktor chokes on his breath. He should be used to it by now, the way Yuuri can casually see right through him sometimes, but it still startles him.

“ _Yuu_ ri,” Lutz whines from the boards, breaking the moment. “Come  _on_ , I wanna see Viktor’s reaction when you do it.”

Viktor blinks, shakes himself back to attention. “When you do what, Yuuri?”

Yuuri rolls his shoulders, grinning. “I guess I’m warmed up enough. Only a few though, okay Lutz? It hasn’t been long since the full moon.”

“Fine,” Lutz agrees, dragging the word out into a whine.

“Don’t you dare look away, okay, Viktor?” Yuuri says. Viktor has to bite down  _as if I ever could_ , which is maybe too much for this stage of their relationship.

“Of course not,” he says, instead, and Yuuri favors him with a brilliant smile, before he skates away, building speed and clearly choosing an approach.

It looks like he’s setting up for a jump, though Viktor can’t fathom what would require this much speed and attention–Yuuri just landed quad-quad combinations with less preparation.

And then Yuuri jumps, and Viktor understands why Lutz was so insistent on him showing it off. There isn’t even a wobble on the landing, and the whole movement was so graceful, so practiced, that Viktor feels like he’s been punched in the gut.

“Yuuri–” Viktor chokes out, and then, “ _How_?”

Yuuri grins, skating back to him.

“I’m a werewolf,” he says, and it’s the first time Viktor’s heard the words sound so easy in Yuuri’s mouth. “So I've had a lot longer to practice, for one thing. And when I’m not in agonizing pain from my entire skeleton reshaping itself, I’m a bit stronger than a normal human.”

“Can you show me again?”

“Of course,” Yuuri says, smiling softly, and skates away, gathering speed and preparing the takeoff.

And then he launches into the air.

 _One, two, three, four, four and a half_ –Yuuri lands with perfect balance, still smiling.

It’s the one jump Viktor could never conquer, the one Yuri still beats himself bloody against. They both wanted to be first, to  _win_ , and here Yuuri is. He’s polished it clean and shining, for the entertainment of fifteen year old girls and retired skaters.

Viktor leans back against the boards, and watches as Yuuri and the Nishigori triplets discuss choreography what would be inconceivable for anyone else. It’s no wonder that Axel skates so fiercely, or that her sisters dream so big.

With Yuuri–hurricane lamp, lighthouse, guiding star–to teach them, none of them ever learned that  _anything_  was impossible.

“Viktor, come on,” Yuuri calls across the rink, “I need a partner for this!”

Viktor shakes his head, but starts skating to Yuuri. He might not know what he’s getting into here, with a long distance relationship and teenaged social media menaces  and  _werewolves_ , Christ, but sometimes, that’s the joy of it.

He wraps an arm around Yuuri’s waist, rests his chin on his shoulder, listens as the Nishigori triplets plot, and refuses to worry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> krasavets-"beautiful"
> 
> Well, that's that! Thanks for sticking with me while i transferred this, and I hope you liked it! If I made you smile or laugh, I'd love it if you'd leave a comment--let me know your favorite part, or what touched you!


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